Pushing the boundaries to provide innovative, sustainable solutions

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Global Innovator: Delta have hit the top 100 in this prestigious list for the second year running (iStock)

Delta Electronics is a Business Reporter client.

How do companies become pioneers? Global leader in power and thermal management solutions, Delta Electronics, has been named a Top 100 Global Innovator by Clarivate for two years running. Its EMEA President, Dalip Sharma, explains why

Innovative products don’t come out of nowhere. The work that creates them takes years, sometimes decades, and if companies don’t create the right environment, seek out the right collaborators and back up their plans with the right intentions, they will struggle to succeed.

That’s the view of Dalip Sharma, EMEA President and General Manager of Delta Electronics, a global leader in power and thermal management solutions.

Delta’s groundbreaking work developing clean and energy-efficient solutions has led to it being named a Top 100 Global Innovator by analytics company Clarivate for two years running. The company’s commitment to research and technology is helping to solve global challenges in a way that’s creating a thriving business, as well as improving society.

Here, Sharma explains how the company keeps itself at the forefront of innovation, and why it is also striving to be a world-class corporate citizen.

What does it mean for Delta to have received this prestigious accolade for the second year running?

According to Clarivate, Delta has demonstrated consistent, above-the-bar innovation, especially when it comes to our patent applications and intellectual assets.

At the end of 2022, the total number of patents approved for Delta exceeded 15,000 – mainly in the United States, mainland China, Taiwan and Europe. In 2022 alone, 1,070 patents were approved.

We invest more than 8 per cent of our annual revenues into research and development. These resources are currently supporting more than 10,000 R&D engineers in 73 dedicated R&D centres around the world.

Having our innovation prowess recognised by prominent institutions such as Clarivate – as well as by our customers and industry partners – adds to our motivation to continue our work.

This latest award recognises Delta’s long-term commitment to energy-saving solutions, value creation, and sustainability as core values, as well as our innovation in system integration, design, channels, brand and service. It is our capability for innovative design that sets us apart from the competition.

Delta has a reputation for providing clean, energy-efficient solutions – how has your sustainability journey evolved?

Environmental goals have always been critical to us. It began with the belief of our founder, Bruce Cheng, who started the company 52 years ago with the aim of building a new type of business – one where environmental protection was not just a consideration, but a fundamental element on which the firm would be built.

As a visionary in the field, he steered Delta into the development of revolutionary switching power supply technology that had substantial potential for energy efficiency improvements. He defined our corporate mission as: “To provide innovative, clean, and energy-efficient solutions for a better tomorrow.” Ever since, Delta has focused on helping to lower our customers’ global footprint by offering a wide range of energy-saving products and solutions.

We also continuously identify mega-trends in which our progress in energy efficiency, power electronics and system integration can provide significant value. This is why our patents in power supply, thermal management, industrial automation and building automation technologies have been instrumental in the development of electric vehicle systems, information and communication networks and energy infrastructure.

We always keep in mind that our innovation is aimed at doing the right thing – reducing carbon emissions and ensuring a sustainable future.

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Could you talk us through some of Delta’s key innovations that you are particularly proud of?

Delta’s core competence is about its high-efficiency power electronics and system integration. We have a thriving portfolio of smart energy-saving systems and solutions in the fields of industrial automation, building automation, telecom power, data centre infrastructure, EV charging, renewable energy, energy storage and display, to nurture the development of smart manufacturing and sustainable cities. We continue to achieve breakthroughs and innovation while respecting intellectual property rights to create greater value in the industry.

One of the key innovations worthy of being mentioned is that Delta has been able to increase the energy conversion efficiency of our switching power supplies to over 90 per cent – up from less than 50 per cent a few decades ago. That’s how we developed the world‘s first server power supply certified as 80 Plus Titanium with an efficiency of over 96 per cent. That milestone also helped us develop telecom power rectifiers with a leading efficiency of up to 98 per cent, as well as photovoltaic inverters with up to 99.2 per cent efficiency. So we’re actually getting close to breaking the laws of physics! Obviously, you can’t go above 100 per cent, but we’ve got pretty close.

Developing DC brushless fan technology is another innovation we are very proud of. It is much more energy efficient and reliable than traditional AC motor fans. With this technology, for example, we helped US consumers save over 30.8 million kWh of electricity in 2022.

Our innovative EV charging technology, which we started developing more than a decade ago, is also a significant accomplishment in our innovation history. Delta has so far been able to deliver over two million EV chargers to our customers worldwide. Plus, our 30kW wireless chargers that can be used for EV charging, or in warehouses for automated guided vehicles, have efficiency of up to 95 per cent.

We have become an expert in energy savings at the factory level as well, by designing and implementing a wide range of energy conservation methods. Between 2011 and 2021, Delta’s production plants around the world implemented a total of 2,517 energy-saving projects, with total savings of 314 million kWh of electricity, which is equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by 345,000 tons.

And we are rapidly enhancing our technology in several next-generation fields. These include power systems for AI and cloud data centres; innovative immersion cooling solutions; IoT-based industrial automation systems with 5G capabilities; IoT-based building automation solutions; powertrain solutions and power electronics components for EVs; smart microgrid-based energy infrastructure leveraging advanced energy storage systems; and even power supplies for hydrogen fuel cells.

How would you describe Delta’s global approach to innovation and the role it plays in the work you do?

We collaborate on R&D projects and cultivate talent with leading universities worldwide, such as MIT, Virginia Tech and UC Berkeley, as well as Taiwan’s National Cheng-Kung University, National Central University, and National Taiwan University, and other top schools in both Taiwan and China. In EMEA we work together with universities such as TU Eindhoven and Fontys University in the Netherlands for talent cultivation and project collaboration.

We work with governmental organisations as well to construct an industrial chain and work closely with like-minded enterprises to create applications that lead the market.

We have set up R&D labs around the world to accelerate the development and integration of innovative applications and solutions, and get closer to our customers to fulfil local market needs. We also understand that every region has unique R&D talent and believe the global coverage of our R&D centres helps us nurture that highly diverse innovation engineering talent pool better than if we had a more concentrated R&D presence.

We are always looking at what comes next in our innovation pipeline. Our advanced research labs are working on technologies that could be 10 years from realisation and that people are not even talking about yet.

Then there is a second layer, which is working on technologies that are nearer to realisation, let’s say in five years’ time. And then we have a third layer, which is working on something we need to deliver next year.

So we continue to build our technology portfolio, with the future as well as the present always in mind.