Up to £30 million is being offered to create regional centres of excellence for the development and scale up of power electronics, machines and drives (PEMD) technologies.

The centres must be open access facilities to be used by industry and researchers and help accelerate the growth of the UK’s supply chains for PEMD.

The ‘Driving the Electric Revolution’ challenge aims to accelerate the UK’s ability to deliver next generation electric vehicles (EVs), hybrid aircraft, energy generation, smart grids, industrial drives, consumer products, low carbon off-highway for construction and agriculture, low carbon maritime and rail.

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is providing the funding under the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).

It will provide the investment needed to establish between two to four regional centres and will cover operational costs to enable them to become established up to the end of March 2024.

Matt Boyle, Interim Challenge Director, Driving the Electric Revolution said: “The purpose of these centres of excellence are to help industry and academia come together to collaborate in development of a flourishing UK supply chain in the core technologies of PEMD.

“This is an excellent opportunity for a consortium of businesses and academia to spearhead this important initiative and build on the UK’s strengths in this area.”

Applicants must register by 27th November 2019.