Ideal Power at Planet MicroCap: B TRAN Technology Advances

On Wednesday, 23 April 2025, Ideal Power (NASDAQ:IPWR) presented at the Planet MicroCap Showcase: VEGAS 2025, unveiling its strategic focus on the commercialization of its B TRAN power semiconductor switch technology. The company highlighted both promising developments and challenges ahead, including securing its first design win and aiming for significant market penetration.

Key Takeaways

• Ideal Power is focused on commercializing its B TRAN technology, which offers significant advantages over IGBT technology, including bidirectionality and lower conduction losses.
• The company secured its first design win for solid-state circuit breakers with an Asian company, with commercial sales expected in the second half of 2025.
• Ideal Power is collaborating with Stellantis on EV drivetrain development and is pursuing additional partnerships in the automotive sector.
• The company’s serviceable addressable market is estimated at $2.4 billion for initial targets and $3.6 billion for the automotive sector.
• Ideal Power emphasizes its strong intellectual property portfolio with 94 issued and 59 pending patents.

Financial Results

• First Design Win: Initial sales are expected in the second half of 2025, with first-year revenues projected at several hundred thousand dollars and over one million dollars in the second year.

• Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM):

- Initial target markets, including solid-state switchgear and energy, are valued at $2.4 billion.

- The automotive market represents an additional $3.6 billion opportunity.

Operational Updates

• Technology: The B TRAN architecture is a power semiconductor switch with advantages over IGBTs. It employs double-sided wafer processing.
• Commercial Agreements: Ideal Power is engaged with Stellantis for EV drivetrain development and potential EV contactor programs. The company is also in discussions with two other global automakers, a top 10 solar provider, and several Tier one global auto suppliers.
• Products:

- B TRAN discrete device (1200V, 50A)

- SimCool power module (1200V, 200A)

- SimCool IQ intelligent power module for renewable energy, energy storage, and EV charging

• Intellectual Property:

- 94 issued patents, including 45 outside the US

- 59 pending patents

- Trade secret process for manufacturing

Future Outlook

• 2025 Milestones: Secure the next phase of the Stellantis development program, capture additional design wins, and initiate sales ramp-up in the second half of 2025.
• Market Focus: Emphasis on solid-state circuit breakers, renewable energy, energy storage, microgrids, and EV charging, with longer-term goals in industrial motor drives and data centers.
• Electric Vehicles: Potential to improve EV range by 7% to 10% using B TRAN technology compared to conventional devices.

For further details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Planet MicroCap Showcase: VEGAS 2025:

Unidentified speaker: Just have the audience feel like I’m busy. Yeah. We’re I really look forward to being here today. I wanted to talk to you about I wanna update them to the.

Unidentified speaker: That’s why I come through with my charisma.

Unidentified speaker: Sure. Yeah. Of course. Alright.

Operator: Welcome, everyone. Our next presenter is, Tim Burns from Ideal Power.

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: Hi, and thanks everyone for joining. So our technology, what we call B TRAN, is a power semiconductor switch, and it has some pretty significant advantages over the competing technologies, which largely is IGBTs. It’s well positioned for some very large and growing markets, things like solid state circuit breakers, which is actually the first market we’re going after, renewable energy, energy storage, multiple applications in electric vehicles, things like the drivetrain and circuit protection within the vehicles as well as applications for data centers and industrial motor drives. Our business model is asset wide. It is a fabulous business model, and we’re really leveraging the existing silicon processing and distribution infrastructure that’s out there.

So we’re a small team really focused on improving the technology and really just leveraging what’s already there, the huge investment that’s already been made in power semiconductors. We’ve had initial sales of our first products, our B TRAN discrete device, our SIMCOOL power module, and also our SIMCOOL IQ intelligent power module. And just recently, here at the end of last year, we secured our first design win, that was for solid state circuit breakers, and I’ll talk more about that. We have an ongoing development program with Stellantis, so one of the world’s largest automakers. It’s for a custom B TRAN module for their drivetrain inverter for their EV platform.

And we also have the technology very well protected from an IP perspective with ninety four issued and 59 pending patents. So what is B TRAN? You can see here that’s a picture of

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: a B TRAN die. If you looked at it,

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: it was only about the size of a dime. You flip it over, it looks the exact same on the other side. So what’s unique about it? First is it is an architecture. So I’d mentioned IGBTs are a competing technology.

They’re an architecture. We’re also an architecture. So we’re making in silicon today. But as cost and quality improve, could make it in things like silicon carbide. It’s also fabricated on both sides of the wafer.

So conventional devices are just processed on a single side of the wafer. For our technology, we’re actually fabricating on both sides, very unique from manufacturing perspective. And that same die can be leveraged across any of those applications that I’d mentioned. So whether it’s going into an electric vehicle, whether it’s going into a power converter for renewable energy, it’s the same die. I’d mentioned it had some significant advantages over IGBTs.

The first is that it’s inherently bidirectional, so it can handle energy flow in either direction. That’s particularly important in applications involving batteries, but you have to both charge and discharge the battery. It also has very low loss, in particular, low conduction losses. That results in lower user costs. If you apply it to an electric vehicle, it means improved range for the EV.

If you apply it to a renewable installation, it’s more usable kilowatt hours from the system. And then since losses generate heat, if you have B TRAN in your OEM products, you can actually have smaller lower cost product designs, which you can have less complex thermal management systems or smaller heat sinks. I had mentioned B TRAN is inherently bidirectional. Conventional devices like IGBTs are unidirectional devices. So it would actually take four conventional devices to make a bidirectional circuit.

You basically need an IGBT and a blocking diode to handle energy flow in one direction and a second IGBT and blocking diode to handle energy in the other direction. We do it in a single switch with conduction losses and bidirectional applications that are more than five times better than the conventional approach. If we look at our serviceable addressable markets, and you really focus on the green section here because those are the first markets we’re going after. These markets will get us to cash flow breakeven and will get us to profitability. The first is solid state switchgear market.

So this is transmission and distribution systems. It’s a circuit protection for those protective relays, also contactors. The second market we’re going after, energy and power, is renewable energy, energy storage, microgrids, and EV charging. Combined, it’s about a $2,400,000,000 SAM for our technology. The longer term markets, are actually larger markets for our technology, the industrial markets, so things like industrial motor drives and uninterruptible power supplies for data centers.

And then the largest opportunity, but also the longest because the length of the sales and design cycle, is the automotive market. That’s a $3,600,000,000 SAM for B TRAN. So I wanna focus first on solid state circuit breakers because this is an exciting application for us that’s happening right now. So the first question, though, is why breakers and solid state semiconductor based circuit breakers? Well, it really comes down to the growth in renewable energy, energy storage, and EV charging that’s coming out of the grid, and there needs to be a grid investment that’s made for faster acting circuit protection solutions.

And this is because DC faults can rise much faster than AC faults, so you can’t rely on electromechanical breakers, which are relatively slow to act. Semiconductor based breakers can operate a hundred times faster than electromechanical breakers. Because of that, they eliminate arcing, which is a safety hazard that can cause fires. It can lead to, damage to downstream equipment. There’s also no physical contacts in a solid state circuit breaker, so it improves long term liability, eliminates maintenance requirements.

It also makes it semiconductor based, it’s programmable, it has diagnostic capability. The challenge has been with solid state circuit breakers is conduction losses of typical semiconductor devices are too high. So for instance, IGBTs are too too significant losses to really make a solid state circuit breaker practical. Our technology has ultra low conduction losses, so it’s really an enabling technology for this application. Also, because it’s bidirectional, you can have fewer devices to get to a given breaker power rating.

And it’s also lower system costs compared to going to something like silicon carbide, which, one, can’t match B TRAIN in terms of performance and conduction losses and also is generally three to five times higher than silicon, devices. So we had, I mentioned, our first design win for solid state circuit breakers. This was late last year. It’s with a company in Asia that’s focused on the industrial and utility markets. We actually had a program as part of that for a development agreement.

We were supposed to provide them with prototypes here at the June, and those prototypes were actually taking some solid state circuit breakers that they had made using silicon carbide MOSFETs, pulling out those silicon carbide MOSFETs, replacing them with our B TRAN and drive related drive circuitry into those prototypes. We actually completed that here at the March, so about three months ahead of schedule. This product is supposed to launch here later this year, so we’re expecting commercial sales from this product here later in 2025. And this is this is expected to be the first of many products with this customer. It’s a given power rating, so there should be a family of these products.

The single product, expect to translate to several hundred thousand dollars of revenue in year one, over a million dollars in year two. But, again, that’s just the first product. We’re expecting to launch a family of these products for their customers. We’re also engaged with some very large companies that I’ll talk more about for, solid state circuit breaker, products. Moving on to a different application, B TRAN’s impact in electric vehicles.

There’s really two impediments to the mass adoption of EVs. The first is cost, and the second is range anxiety. Our technology really applies to both and really helps solve both of those problems. First, it’s made in silicon, so it’s much less expensive than looking at silicon carbide alternatives. And then, also, it’s much more efficient than the other solutions that are out there.

There’s about $1,100 of content in terms of power semiconductors in an electric vehicle, used at places like the EV contactors, which protect the battery, the drivetrain, so the traction inverter, the DC to DC converter, the onboard charger. Toyota had done some work looking at improving IGBT efficiency and the impact that would have on the range of an electric vehicle. We extrapolated some of their work, applied it to B TRAN, and we expect a 7% to 10% improvement in the range of an EV if it utilizes B TRAN rather than conventional devices. I’d mentioned also we have a development program with Stellantis. They’re one of the world’s largest automakers.

You can see here, many of their brands. Our first agreement with them is for a product development agreement for a custom B TRAN module for their EV drivetrain platform. I don’t I’m not sure how familiar the audience is with Stellantis, but they had their own challenges last year. But they’re back reengaged this year. We actually met with their teams from Italy, France, and The US, and Detroit here in mid February, for a program update.

And at that program update, they actually learned about our technology for EV contactors. So now there’s opportunity here for a second program with Stellantis, which may actually move much faster than the drivetrain program, specifically for e fee contactors because they realized that silicon carbide wasn’t meeting their needs when they were looking at designing prototype EV contactors. Stoantis is the first company that we can name. The reason for that is they named us publicly first as part of their twenty twenty three Stoantis Venture Awards. And our current expectation is to, one, secure a program for EV contactors, and second is to secure the next phase of the drivetrain program, which would take that product through automotive qualification.

In terms of other commercial agreements and collaborations, we’re also engaged with two other global automakers, top 10 solar provider, two Forbes Global five hundred power management market leaders. So these are very large companies. We can’t name them specifically, but for context, companies like Siemens and Schneider and ABB. We’re also engaged with three Tier one global auto suppliers, a global provider backup power solutions and a global power conversion supplier. So these companies have our technology.

They’re evaluating it in their labs now for use in their applications with the goal from our perspective to convert those into design wins or development agreements. In terms of our commercial product, our first product was a single packaged die. It’s the V TRAN discrete that you can see there. It’s rated at 1,200 volts, 50 amps. We tested up to 150 amps, a very robust design.

Our SimCool power module is rated at 1,200 volts and 200 amps. It is excuse me. Excuse me. I’m getting over cold. And that product is really enabling for solid state circuit breakers.

It was designed specifically for the solid state circuit breaker market. It’s a billion dollar stamp for us. We tested that up to 430 amps. And then the third product is the SIMCOOL IQ. This takes that SIMCOOL power module, add circuitry for localized control, so it’s an integrated driver.

And that opens up additional markets for us like renewable energy, energy energy storage, and EV charging. Excuse me. In terms of twenty twenty five milestones, we set these back in January. Thank you, the first was to secure the next phase of our development program. With Stellantis, we still expect to not only secure that phase of the program, but also have a second development program with Stellantis for EV contactors.

We’re also and actually accomplished this, completed the deliverables in the first half of twenty twenty five related to our first design win. So that was delivering the B TRAN prototypes that they can then take to market. Now we’re also looking to capture additional design wins and custom development agreements this year. That’ll proceed our initial sales ramp, which we, again, we expect the second half of this year. We’re also looking to increase the power rating of our products.

Right now, you’d seen, like, a 50 amp device for the single die, 200 amps for the SIM cool power module. Based on our testing, we think that those are pretty conservative ratings. We should be able to increase those power ratings, which will be a win for the customer and for us since you can run them in series or in parallel to get to whatever rating you need. So you need less devices to get to a given power rating. And then we’re also looking to complete third party automotive qualification testing.

I’d mentioned our technology is very well protected from a patent perspective. We actually have 94 issued patents. 45 of those are issued outside of The United States. So places like Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, India, and Taiwan. We also have 59 pending patents.

They cover the B TRAN architecture itself, how you package the device, controlling the device, some manufacturing related patents. But we keep the process flow on how do you make a standard or a double sided device in a standard silicon fab using standard silicon processing equipment as a trade secret. So even if someone, let’s say a company in China, was one to infringe upon our patents, they still would have no idea how to make them. And that’s something that took us years to learn. You can see here some of our recent

Unidentified speaker: enthusiasm. What’s that? The enthusiasm.

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: Donna Sawinski texted me that today. Did he

Unidentified speaker: really? Yeah. Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: Kinda humorous.

Unidentified speaker: Testing. Testing.

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: Tim, peck time, Todd.

Unidentified speaker: You’re a really good presenter when you’re enthusiastic. Have a great day.

Unidentified speaker: Well, an an easy way to start is just have the audience feel like. Yeah. We I really look forward to being here today. I wanted to talk to you about I wanna update them with the.

Unidentified speaker: That’s why I come through with my charisma.

Unidentified speaker: Sure. Yeah. Of course.

Operator: Alright. Welcome, everyone. Our next presenter is Tim Burns from Ideal Power.

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: Hi, and thanks everyone for joining. So our technology, what we call B TRAN, is a power semiconductor switch and has some pretty significant advantages over the competing technologies, which largely is IGBTs. It’s well positioned for some very large and growing markets, things like solid state circuit breakers, which is actually the first market we’re going after, renewable energy, energy storage, multiple applications in electric vehicles, things like the drivetrain and circuit protection within the vehicles, as well as applications for data centers and industrial motor drives. Our business model is asset wide. It is a fabulous business model, and we’re really leveraging the existing silicon processing and distribution infrastructure that’s out there.

So we’re a small team really focused on improving the technology, and really just leveraging what’s already there, the huge investment that’s already been made, in power semiconductors. We’ve had initial sales of our first products, our B TRAN discrete device, our SimCool power module and also our SimCool IQ intelligent power module. And just recently, here at the end of last year, we secured our first design win, that was for solid state circuit breakers, and I’ll talk more about that. We have an ongoing development program with Stellantis, so one of the world’s largest automakers. It’s for a custom B module for their drivetrain inverter for their EV platform.

And we also have the technology very well protected from an IP perspective with 94 issued and 59 pending patents. So what is B TRAN? You can see here that’s a picture of

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: a B TRAN die. If you looked at it,

Tim Burns, Presenter, Ideal Power: it was only about the size of a dime. You flip it over, it looks the exact same on the other side. So what’s unique about it? First is it is an architecture. So I’d mentioned IGBTs are a competing technology.

They’re an architecture. We’re also an architecture. So we’re making in silicon today. But as cost and quality improve, we could make it in things like silicon carbide. It’s also fabricated on both sides of the wafer.

So conventional devices are just processed on a single side of the wafer. For our technology, we’re actually fabricating on both sides, very unique from manufacturing perspective. And that same die can be leveraged across any of those applications that I’d mentioned. So whether it’s going into an electric vehicle, whether it’s going into a power converter for renewable energy, it’s the same die. I’d mentioned it had some significant advantages over IGBTs.

The first is that it’s inherently bidirectional, so it can handle energy flow in either direction. That’s particularly important in applications involving batteries, but you have to both charge and discharge the battery. It also has very low loss, in particular, low conduction losses. That results in lower user costs. If you apply it to an electric vehicle, it means improved range for the EV.

If you apply it to a renewable installation, it’s more usable kilowatt hours from the system. And then since losses generate heat, if you have B TRAN in your OEM products, you can actually have smaller lower cost product designs, but you can have less complex thermal management systems or smaller heat sinks. I had mentioned B TRAIN is inherently bidirectional. Conventional devices like IGBTs are unidirectional devices. So it would actually take four conventional devices to make an bidirectional circuit.

You basically need an IGBT and a blocking diode to handle energy flow in one direction and a second IGBT and blocking diode to handle energy in the other direction. We do it in a single switch with conduction losses in bidirectional applications that are more than five times better than the conventional approach. If we look at our serviceable addressable markets, and you really focus on the green section here because those are the first markets we’re going after. These markets will get us to cash flow breakeven and will get us to profitability. The first is solid state switchgear market.

So this is transmission and distribution systems. It’s a circuit protection for those protective relays, also contactors. The second market we’re going after, energy and power, is renewable energy, energy storage, grids, and EV charging. Combined is about a $2,400,000,000 SAM for our technology. The longer term markets, which are actually larger markets for our technology, the industrial markets, so things like industrial motor drives and uninterruptible power supplies for data centers.

And then the largest opportunity, but also the longest because the length of the sales and design cycle, is the automotive market. That’s a $3,600,000,000 SAM for B TRAN. So I wanna focus first on solid state circuit breakers because this is an exciting application for us that’s happening right now. So the first question, though, is why solid state circuit breakers and solid state semiconductor based circuit breakers? Well, it really comes down to the growth in renewable energy, energy storage, and EV charging that’s coming out of the grid, and there needs to be a grid investment that’s made for faster acting circuit protection solutions.

And this is because DC faults can rise much faster than AC faults, so you can’t rely on electromechanical breakers, which are relatively slow to act. Semiconductor based breakers can operate a hundred times faster than electromechanical breakers. Because of that, they eliminate arcing, which is a safety hazard that can cause fires. It can lead to, damage to downstream equipment. There’s also no physical contacts in a solid state circuit breaker, so it improves long term liability, eliminates maintenance requirements, and also makes it semiconductor based, it’s programmable, and has diagnostic capability.

The challenge has been with solid state circuit breakers is conduction losses of typical semiconductor devices are too high. So for instance, IGBTs are too too significant losses to really make a solid state circuit breaker practical. Our technology has ultra low conduction losses, so it’s really an enabling technology for this application. Also, because it’s bidirectional, you can have fewer devices to get to a given breaker power rating. And it’s also lower system costs compared to going to something like silicon carbide, which, one, can’t match B TRAIN in terms of performance and conduction losses and also is generally three to five times higher than silicon, devices.

So we had, I mentioned, our first design win for solid state circuit breakers. This was late last year. It’s with a company in Asia that’s focused on the

Operator: This presentation has now finished. Please check back shortly for the archive.

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