By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- Technology startup LC Drives will be getting the $500,000 in state grants they have asked for to hire 10 to 20 more people and buy more equipment for production of their innovative electric motors for buses and boats.

The LC Drives plan was one of the “priority projects” listed in the North Country Regional Economic Development Council’s most recent application to Albany for funding. The funding awards were announced Thursday.

“We’re gearing up for early pilot production, later next year,” said CEO Russell Marvin, whose firm now operates in Potsdam’s Commerce Park and at offices in Clarkson University’s downtown campus. “We’re installing the test equipment now. We’re starting to expand and move toward manufacturing.”

Marvin says he wants 10 more people soon to start production with two sizes of the improved motors, one rated at a quarter of a megawatt and another at one megawatt – about 300 and 1,500 horsepower, respectively. Beyond that, he believes they will “double and triple” the number of people working for them in the next year.

Eight employees are in Potsdam and a couple are outside the area, but “it’s all coming to Potsdam,” Marvin said, including manufacturing facilities, when the time comes.

The employees in Potsdam are working in Clarkson University Business Incubator space in their old downtown buildings. They are in Peyton Hall, and with a laboratory in a business park building east of downtown, while another incubator building, Damon Hall, is being remodeled. Marvin says the group is expected to move there in the spring.

“Our lab is in one of the IDA buildings near the Potsdam airport, and that will move into Damon Hall, which has been vacant for 15 or 20 years,” Marvin said.

The $500,000 grant from the state is a fraction of the $2,533,022 the current phase of expansion will require, according to the NCREDC.

“We’re also raising money through strategic partners and investors,” Marvin said. “We’ll double and triple employees over the next year, both on the manufacturing side and in engineering.”

The breakthrough in motor technology that Marvin is so enthused about results from an improvement in keeping the motors cool.

To improve efficiency, “we use glycol coolant, similar to what is in your car’s radiator, and run it directly into the slot” between the casing and the wire coils.

Many people will be familiar with traditional electric motors that use fins with air moving over them to cool the hottest parts of a motor, the wire windings at its core.

“High performance motors use a cooling jacket with glycol, but we get significantly higher efficiency by putting coolant right into that slot,” Marvin said.

The result, he says, is motors that are more efficient and much smaller than current motors of similar output.

He doesn’t take credit for the idea. “I’m the CEO and was the first employee,” but he says the concept has been “developed in the company, and lots of people are involved these days.”

“Where you can make a motor smaller, you have more design options,” for more efficiency or for more power, he said.

“The key is that our motors are smaller, so they fit better” in applications such as in generators atop windmill towers, in electric buses, and in propulsion for ships, the areas the company is focusing on now.

“And we’ll try to set it all up here” in Potsdam, Marvin said.

Marvin, who calls himself a “serial entrepreneur,” said he has been at jobs all over the country since graduating from Clarkson in 1988.

But he came back to Potsdam because he was attracted by the Clarkson incubator program, “access to the talent at Clarkson,” and because Potsdam is “a good place to grow a business.”