Driving the electric revolution: building regional centres of excellence

31/10/2019

27/11/2019

Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation and through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, invites applications for its call for building regional centres of excellence under the driving the electric revolution programme. This seeks to create regional centres of excellence for the development, prototyping and scale up of power electronics, machines and drives technologies. The total budget is up to £30 million, to support a single project that will create two to four regional centres across the UK. The project’s total eligible costs should be up to £50m by 31 March 2024. Funding covers investment in capital equipment needed to create the centres as well as operational costs to enable the centres to become established up to the end of 31 March 2024. Funding amounts depend on the organisation type.

The centres will support the industrialisation of power electronics, machines and drives technologies to help accelerate the growth of the UK’s supply chains for PEMD. The centres must be open access facilities that support the development, prototyping and scaling of PEMD technologies and manufacturing processes. The centres must focus on all seven industry sectors: •aerospace; •automotive; •energy, both generation and distribution; •industrial, such as production equipment, robots or lighting; •marine; •off highway such as construction or agricultural equipment; •rail.

The lead applicant may be a UK registered business of any size, a research organisation or a research and technology organisation. They must demonstrate clear industry support for their application and carry out the project work in the UK. Academic institutions cannot work alone. Project partners may include a UK registered business, research organisation, academic institution, charity, public sector organisation or RTO.