Unveiled at last week’s CES in Las Vegas, Tau’s software-defined power electronics platform enables efficienct, scalable and reconfigurable systems for electric infrastructure and energy services.

California-based Tau unveiled Ion, its software-defined power electronic platform for broad applicability and scale across mobility, energy, industrial systems and the grid. Ion enables high-performance power conversions that are being leveraged for charging systems, motor drives, data centres and distributed energy applications.

Ion has a modular, multi-layer architecture that tightly integrates hardware with firmware and scalable software libraries. This platform approach allows developers and partners to deploy power converters with flexibility while achieving lower system cost, higher performance and faster time to market than traditional, application-specific designs.

“Power converters are fundamental to how energy moves around the world, and Ion reinvents how they are built and deployed,” said Wesley Pennington, CEO of Tau. “Developing conventional power electronics requires significant capital investment and highly specialised expertise, while off-the-shelf options force compromises in efficiency, cost and packaging. Ion delivers a modular, software-defined alternative that enables rapid, cost-effective deployment of highly efficient power systems, accelerating electrification and the deployment of new energy resources across industries.”

Tau has demonstrated that Ion-based converters can achieve efficiencies exceeding 99%, deliver system-level performance gains, and reduce overall converter size and cost. These advantages are realised by addressing key power-electronics problems directly within standard building blocks.

“Each Ion module abstracts the underlying power electronics hardware, integrating optimised circuitry, low-level controls, filtering, protection and waveform generation through tightly coupled hardware and firmware,” said Matthias Preindl, chief scientist of Tau. “Modules are networked or interconnected via a real-time communications layer that enables coordinated control, protection and diagnostics across the system. At the highest level, applications are defined through software control sets and common libraries, requiring only application-specific functionality to be added and validated, significantly reducing development time, cost and risk.”

Publicly unveiled at CES, Ion systems can dynamically reconfigure to bring individual modules on- and off-line to create adaptable, shared power resources. Example use cases include n-in-one architectures for automotive platforms and reconfigurable, self-healing microgrids for smart energy and infrastructure applications.

Tau is partnering with users across multiple industries to develop and deploy systems on the Ion platform, accelerating electrification and the integration of future energy resources.

A single platform supports a range of applications anywhere power conversion is required, including charging systems, motor drives, data centres, solar, distributed energy resources, grid-connected infrastructure and beyond. Its software-defined architecture decouples application functionality from hardware, enabling new power converter use cases to be deployed and updated through software rather than hardware redesign.

Standard Ion modules can be combined, reconfigured or dynamically brought on- and off-line to support a wide range of power levels and system architectures. Demonstrated efficiencies exceed 98 to 99%, delivering reduced losses even under partial loads, improved thermal performance and lower operating costs.

Addressing key power electronics problems at the module level can reduce BoM complexity, engineering effort and validation cost at the system level.

Ion’s waveform generation reduces electromagnetic interference (EMI) while improving system-level efficiency by lowering high-frequency switching losses in motor and motion-control applications. Common hardware and software libraries reduce application-specific development and validation, accelerating deployment across programmes and industries. Real-time networking, coordinated control and built-in diagnostics enable fault tolerance, protection and self-healing capabilities in complex systems.

From electric vehicles to the grid and beyond, Tau Motors (taumotors.com) uses a software-defined hardware platform to provide scale, economics and performance by combining expertise in power conversion, systems engineering and control.