£635,000 grant lift for Fault Current

Fault Current has received £635,000 from the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Energy Entrepreneurs Fund to develop and test its next-generation fault current limiter ahead of sale to distribution network operators and renewable energy generators.

The company, which is backed by Sheffield-based university spin-out funding specialist Fusion IP, was founded on the invention of Dr Jeremy Hall at Cardiff University. It addresses the need for further protection as energy demand increases and more clean energy sources, such as wind and solar, are added to an ageing and already overburdened national electrical infrastructure.

Unlike competing products, the fault current limiter is designed to be a passive permanent magnet device, that requires no external power or back-up, recovers automatically when a fault is cleared and requires minimal maintenance.