Low-profile relay handles 320A surges in smart lighting and IoT devices
The new DW-YL polarized power relays from Panasonic Industry offer up to 20A switching capacity with an exceptional inrush current tolerance and limited heat dissipation with a compact footprint.
The DW-YL series significantly boosts inrush handling compared to earlier series. The DW-HL relays were rated for lower inrush at 16A load; the new DW-YL series achieves nearly three times the surge capacity while maintaining the same footprint. In practice, this enables designers to replace larger or multiple components with a single DW-YL relay, achieving a more compact and robust solution for edge connected embedded systems that must handle occasional high startup currents.
The DW-YL series latching relays are rated for 20A operation, and designed to tolerate extreme surge currents up to 320A for 1.2ms, as encountered when switching capacitive loads like LED drivers and other inrush scenarios. Despite its capability, the relay’s form factor remains compact, minimizing PCB footprint in space-constrained designs, therefore targeting smart lighting, IoT switching devices, and power distribution units.
In terms of performance, the relays can reliably handle the kind of surges seen in lighting ballast circuits or when multiple devices power-on simultaneously, without contact welding. Its polarized one-coil or two-coil latching design means that after actuation, no continuous coil power is needed. This low coil energy drawing around 200mW pulse not only limits heat dissipation but also supports energy efficient, battery-powered or always-on applications.