Hart becomes QPT motor drive and business advisor

Cambridge GaN power drive start-up QPT has recruited an advisor to its board: electric motor and business specialist Simon Hart, who “holds C-level roles at several technology companies”, according to QPT, and is entrepreneur in residence at the University of Nottingham.

“Nothing excites me more than finding a British innovation and then helping the company on its journey to bring that to the world,” said Hart. “Although GaN offers huge potential, QPT identified issues with GaN devices, including thermal management and production of RF interference, which is why silicon carbide is seen by the power electronics industry as the way forward for power electronics. SiC, in reality, only gives a very short switching frequency range, to around 100kHz, before it hits similar problems, and this limit is related to harmonic losses in electric motors.”

“Simon brings a wealth of experience in scaling up businesses to exploit innovative technologies,” said QPT CEO Rupert Baines. “He also has first-hand experience with electric motors drive platforms from when he was at Emerson Industrial Automation, and automotive power management – which is a key area for us – when he was at Yasa. He is also very hands at innovative problem solving with more than forty patents to his name.”

Hart went on to explain more about the future of GaN: “Issues are rooted in driving GaN at microwave frequencies, so QPT solved these problems by bringing microwave solutions to power electronics. Their technology enables GaN to be viable with a huge switching frequency range – 1MHz or more – so it can deliver important power savings, for example slashing electric motor VFD electronics losses.”

QPT was founded in Cambridge in 2019.