HUNTSVILLE – Huntsville engineering firm AVNIK Defense Solutions has been given an opportunity to commercialize a military product to aid civilian utility companies, thanks to Innovate Alabama.
The product – an intelligent hand-held Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (iFMCW) toolset – detects faulty wiring in Army weapons systems. Through $70,000 in up-funding, AVNIK can modify the toolset to be used by any electrical power infrastructure, such as utility companies, to find faults in wires and cables.
Locally, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Huntsville Utilities have shown interest in the technology. The utilities face a phenomenon called “treeing,” where partial discharges – resembling the branches of a tree – damage the wires’ and cables’ insulation.
According to company President and CEO Michele Platt, AVNIK’s technology can detect and locate faulty wiring in cables, especially those experiencing “treeing.”
“We were busy doing our Army STTR when we had the opportunity to bid on the Innovate Alabama grant,” said Platt. “We did our due diligence by meeting with Huntsville Utilities to discover what is ‘eating their lunch’ so to speak.
“We set up a use case that involves getting samples of the types of wiring and cables used by Huntsville Utilities and TVA, hooking them up to the iFMCW to see if it gets results. From there we lay out the development requirements for a commercialized version of the iFMCW toolset.”
The Small Business Administration’s SBIR and STTR programs expect companies to explore their technological potential thereby creating more jobs and revenue for the state. Expanding the techology would also bring other problem-solving technologies to Alabama, Platt said.
And it is an incentive to take something being used for the Army and profit from its commercialization
“This Innovate Alabama grant hit all those milestones,” Platt said.
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