Our Technical Partner (Dr Charlie Elliott) had a busy end to last week getting in a grant application to Innovate UK. It is great to see that UK Gov / IUK has responded rapidly to the current crisis. It is running a short turn-around 100% funded grant scheme for up to £50k to be spent within 6 months. SPS has applied to allow it to design an innovative power electronics controller for use a wide variety of applications. The grant will cover the hardware design and prototyping.

SPS gets many enquiries where the volumes don’t justify a fully custom solution. Using a common controller but with bespoke power electronics is a very useful half-way house. It should allow SPS to win more projects and thereby sustain it going forward and hopefully expand!! The controller will support many different applications but will be principally aimed at niche vehicle electrification projects such as emergency vehicles, rail works trains, construction and mining equipment. The hardware and software will support not only motor drives but also ACDC and DCDC power conversion requirements.

If we are granted the funding, we will be kicking the project off in about 4 weeks times. We anticipate having the controller ready for use by the end of 2020. If you think this is of interest to you then please do make contact and we can give you more information in terms of specification and cost targets.