# Tesseract, want a million dollars?



## Ivansgarage (Sep 3, 2011)

Tess new title 

Chief AC Electron Herder



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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Yep, I'm aware of the Google "Little Box Challenge". I haven't decided if I want to enter it both because it will be deceptively difficult to win, but mainly because they won't pick a winner until 2016 and, well, I'm a busy guy as it is...


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> Yep, I'm aware of the Google "Little Box Challenge". I haven't decided if I want to enter it both because it will be deceptively difficult to win, but mainly because they won't pick a winner until 2016 and, well, I'm a busy guy as it is...


Yeah, I've heard a lot of people mention that contest but the problem is that the task is seemingly difficult. If someone / some company could accomplish such a thing it'd move the state of the art forward by quite a nice nudge. And, they'd make significantly more than a million dollars in the process. The contest allows for the winner to maintain ownership and control of the design and still be able to sell it. However, the fact that the device is worth so much more than a million means that if it were reasonable to accomplish somebody would already have done it and cashed in. That no one has (not even some huge company) would seem to indicate that the prize is very difficult to accomplish properly. Now, that's not to say that someone won't find a way to skirt the rules and cheat to get a submission that means the criteria while being too much of a fire hazard or too short lived to actually sell. That's the most likely outcome - that somebody games the system. They'll test the device for a limited amount of time and it must work for that span of time. It's free to explode in a nuclear fireball and take out a 5 mile radius after that time.


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## Hollie Maea (Dec 9, 2009)

Just to be clear, what they are asking for is not an EV inverter. More like something you would use for solar panels: About 2kW output, single phase 240V.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

CKidder said:


> Yeah, I've heard a lot of people mention that contest but the problem is that the task is seemingly difficult. If someone / some company could accomplish such a thing it'd move the state of the art forward by quite a nice nudge. And, they'd make significantly more than a million dollars in the process. The contest allows for the winner to maintain ownership and control of the design and still be able to sell it....


I agree with all of the above but would also note condition 12 in the terms & conditions basically states that you give Google the right to reproduce your design or a derivative thereof. Also, that the prize of $1M is *before* taxes, and the dollar value of the prize automatically puts you into the highest federal income tax bracket so kiss a good $400k of that money goodbye... Two years of work on something that will be exceptionally difficult to pull off and all you get is $600k? I think I'll buy a lottery ticket each week instead. 



Hollie Maea said:


> Just to be clear, what they are asking for is not an EV inverter. More like something you would use for solar panels: About 2kW output, single phase 240V.


Yes, I was in the middle of explaining the same thing when I hit preview and saw this post, which sort of rendered mine moot.

More specifically, this is for a 1400W (2000VA at 0.7pf) "static" inverter, and judging by the source specification of 450VDC in series with 10 ohms, it seems it is intended to be supplied by a boost-topology PFC stage (if they had required Maximum Power Point Tracking of the input V*I then windmills or solar panels would be more likely sources).


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Whatever it is it will be extremely power dense AND efficient. Probably liquid or liquid gas cooled. Not even sure the current state of electronics qualify for the small size. And they want inside a coke bottle/ softball sized package.

IMHO 1 mill $ ain't enough prize.


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