{"slug": "enphase-energy-expands-us-manufacturing-for-ai-data-center-infrastructure", "title": "Enphase Energy expands US manufacturing for AI data center infrastructure", "summary": "Enphase Energy announced its IQ Solid-State Transformer (IQ SST) platform for AI data center power infrastructure, targeting an 11 GW annual US market by 2031. The modular system starts at 1.25 MW, scales to 2.5 MW, and achieves 98.5% peak efficiency with 99.999% availability. CEO Badri Kothandaraman said the platform could eliminate traditional UPS systems, with demonstrations in late 2026, pilots in 2027, and volume shipments in 2028.", "body_md": "Via electrek.co\n\n# Enphase Energy expands US manufacturing for AI data center infrastructure\n\nThe solar microinverter giant is pivoting hard into AI power infrastructure with a new solid-state transformer platform targeting an 11 GW annual market by 2031.\n\nEnphase Energy, the company best known for slapping microinverters on rooftop solar panels, is making a sharp pivot into one of the most electricity-hungry industries on the planet: AI data centers.\n\nThe NASDAQ-listed firm announced the development of its IQ Solid-State Transformer (IQ SST) platform, a distributed power conversion system designed specifically for the dense, always-on computing environments that large language models and AI workloads demand. And it plans to build the whole thing on American soil, leveraging manufacturing lines that have already churned out roughly 87.8 million microinverters.\n\n## What Enphase is actually building\n\nEnphase’s answer is the IQ SST, a modular building block that starts at 1.25 MW and scales to 2.5 MW. Each unit integrates 342 power modules built on advanced gallium nitride (GaN) technology and Enphase’s proprietary Kestrel ASIC chip.\n\nThe specs are genuinely impressive. Peak efficiency hits 98.5%, meaning only 1.5% of electricity gets lost in the conversion process. Targeted availability sits at 99.999%, the so-called “five nines” standard that translates to roughly five minutes of downtime per year.\n\nCEO Badri Kothandaraman has positioned the platform as potentially eliminating the need for traditional uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and battery sidecars.\n\n## The timeline and market opportunity\n\nEnphase is targeting initial system demonstrations in late 2026, with customer pilots following in 2027 and volume shipments beginning in 2028.\n\nThe company projects the US addressable market for IQ SST in AI data centers will exceed 11 GW annually by 2031.\n\nEnphase also became a Platinum member of the Open Compute Project on June 30, 2026, signaling its intent to embed itself in the open-source hardware ecosystem that hyperscalers like Meta and Microsoft rely on for data center design.\n\n## From rooftops to server racks\n\nEnphase has deployed over 6.5 million IQ microinverters manufactured in the US, plus 50 MWh of IQ battery storage.\n\n## What this means for investors\n\nVolume shipments don’t start until 2028, and Enphase will be competing against established power infrastructure players who already serve the data center market.\n\nThe 11 GW annual market projection by 2031 is the number to watch. Enphase’s decision to leverage existing US manufacturing capacity rather than building greenfield facilities limits the capital expenditure risk.\n\n**Disclosure:** This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our\n\n[Editorial Policy](https://cryptobriefing.com/editorial-policy/).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enphase-energy-expands-us-manufacturing-for-ai-data-center-infrastructure", "canonical_source": "https://cryptobriefing.com/enphase-energy-ai-data-center-manufacturing/", "published_at": "2026-08-04 12:32:45+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-04 12:42:09.883564+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-infrastructure", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Enphase Energy", "IQ SST", "Badri Kothandaraman", "Open Compute Project", "Meta", "Microsoft"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enphase-energy-expands-us-manufacturing-for-ai-data-center-infrastructure", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enphase-energy-expands-us-manufacturing-for-ai-data-center-infrastructure.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enphase-energy-expands-us-manufacturing-for-ai-data-center-infrastructure.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enphase-energy-expands-us-manufacturing-for-ai-data-center-infrastructure.jsonld"}}