Grants and Contributions

Solace Power has seen a significant uptick in the interest from automotive OEM’s and Tier 1’s toward the design and development of new wireless power transfer systems for autonomous vehicles and EVs. Some of the largest automotive players in the world see the future of the design of electronics in the next generation of automobiles will be increasingly wireless.

This project will see Solace Power collaborate with Tier 1 automotive suppliers to solve technical design challenges for EV and autonomous vehicle wireless power applications, as well as to simplify manufacturing of autonomous vehicles, and to improve reliability of interior and exterior vehicle features.

Harnessing the power of electric fields in an approach called Resonant Capacitive Coupling, Solace Power released its first product based on this technology in 2018. The firm has since invested in strengthening the platform to make it suitable for magnetic and electric field power transfer and developed a capability called High-Frequency Induction, which broadens market applicability. The project's intent is to improve on aspects of the technology to address market demands and develop and implement quality and test systems and to produce a next-generation prototype that can be released for manufacturing. This third generation modular platform will serve to address requirements for several product-market combinations, primarily in the auto and telecom markets.

This project involves the hiring of a 2021 Electrical Engineering graduate who will then work on developing new coil systems for High Frequency Induction (HFI) systems to improve efficiency, simplify the product complexity, reduce cost and decrease the size/volume of wireless power transfer (WPT) units.

The firm will hire a recent mechanical engineering graduate to build mechanical fixtures for volume production tests for integrated circuit testing (ICT). The graduate will also support customer projects and work closely with electronic manufacturing service (EMS) companies.

This Youth project deals with the development of the wireless power transfer link (WPTL) system that Solace has designed and developed in collaboration with Boeing Test & Evaluation. The recent graduate will work on initiating the production validation process andf on undertaking various certification and reliability tests to ensure the product will be certified to aircraft-qualified & ready for manufacturing. In the air-frame to rotor power space, contact based slip rings & roll rings are the traditional solutions for transferring electrical power across any type of rotating joint. This wireless power transfer system will resolve the numerous problems experienced with existing solutions.

The objective of this project is to develop a second-generation production prototype (TRL 7) that delivers an optimized, digitized platform ready to be released for volume manufacturing and complete a 50 unit initial trial production run with the capability for higher volume.
The 50-unit production run will target Telecommunications market applications that are nearest in time and are looking for deliverables in Q4 2020 or Q1 2021.

Project focuses on development of accurate impedance detection hardware and advanced software algorithms for implementing adaptive impedance matching in a variable WPT system. Associated Specific Absorption Rate (SAR - measure of the rate of absorption of RF energy in the body) implications will also be investigated.

With the goal of optimizing the cost and complexity of Resonant Capacitive Coupling (RC2, digital power control will be investigated and a variety of class D and E inverter topologies will be compared for different power and loading requirements. ElectroMagnetic Compatibility will be a focus as it strongly impacts the feasibility of the designs.