EPC Opens Motor Drive centre in Italy
Turin design centre will help customers use GaN in motor drive applications
EPC has opened a new design application centre near Turin, Italy, to focus on growing motor drive applications based on GaN technology in the e-mobility, robotics, drones, and industrial automation markets.
The specialist team will support customers in accelerating their design cycles and define future Integrated Circuits for power management with state-of-the art equipment to test applications from 400 W to 10’s of kW.
Strategically located, Turin has a historical tradition in electric motors and motor drives enabling the company to draw on the wealth of local technical talent. EPC’s engineers are helping customers reduce their design cycle times and adopt GaN for more efficient, smaller, lower-cost systems. Moreover, the centre is exploring ways to exploit the potential of EPC’s GaN technology in motor drive applications to enable a substantial increase in the efficiency of the motor, leading to higher power density designs than what has been possible with historically MOSFET-based designs.
Turin also features the Power Electronics Innovation Centre, a cross-department entity in the Politecnico di Torino - one of the most important technical Universities in Europe - and EPC is collaborating closely with PEIC by investing in shared research and development.
The new facility is headed by Marco Palma, EPC’s director of Motor Systems and Applications. Commenting on the opening he said, “our new facility combines a comprehensive GaN product portfolio and design expertise offering customers a centre of excellence that is unrivalled for motor drive applications. Its location is key too, as Europe is driving the green revolution in the e-mobility market, by using the Euro 7 standard in the short term and by banning internal combustion engines by 2035. This is definitely the right time to invest in higher power density motor solutions that avoid un-necessary energy waste.”
