Flex Power Modules has announced the BMR490 DC-DC converter with active current sharing.

This feature enables two or more converters to be used in parallel for demanding datacom applications, thus delivering higher power on a single rail or creating redundancy.

The BMR490 is a non-isolated DC-DC converter in the quarter-brick form factor 58.4×36.8×14.5mm.

It can provide an output power of up to 1300W, with an input voltage range of 40V to 60V, and output voltage of 12V. The converter offers efficiency of typically 97.3% at 53Vin and half load, in part because it is parallelable Hybrid Regulated Ratio (HRR).

Up to six BMR490 converters can be used in parallel. The converters can be used with OR-ing to provide redundancy, so that power will still be supplied if one or more converters fails, or they can be used without OR-ing, which increases efficiency.

Compared to using traditional droop load sharing (DLS), the BMR490 enables better thermal balance between load and sharing units, Flex claims.

This is due, the firm says, to the higher accuracy achieved by active current sharing, and the fact that each unit can deliver 1260W of output power in parallel mode per module over the full input voltage range, with droop of 200mV at full power and nominal input.

Olle Hellgren, director of product management and business development at Flex Power Modules, says the BMR490 is “the only module of its class that can offer active current sharing, with the benefits of higher accuracy that this technology delivers.”

The BMR490 with active current sharing is available from October 2019.