Iris Technology has been awarded a contract from the US Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC) for the initial phase of its solar power adaptor II (SPA II).

Under the $42m contract, to be implemented over a six year period, Iris Technology will provide a portable solar power system.

Iris Technology president and chief executive officer Edward O’Rourke said that the SPA II’s next generation StarPower controller is the major technological advancement in solar charging, power management and distribution.

"By incorporating elements from our extremely compact, highly successful Merlin family of radio power adapters, our new StarPower sets the standard in solar power controller performance," O’Rourke added.

Designed to address current and future rechargeable battery chemistry, the StarPower powers virtually all tactical radios and is based on Iris Technology’s software platform.

"The SPACES feature uninterruptible power management and distribution system to deliver power for military environments."

O’Rourke said that the StarPower accepts any DC input source from 9 to 44 VDC, charges multi-chemistry batteries and provides up to 400W output power.

The SPA II is the next generation version of the solar portable alternative communications energy system (SPACES).

The SPACES has been designed to convert solar and tactical power sources to support combat operations and 12 VDC commercial accessories.

In addition to supporting mixed chemistries and mixed state-of-charge with up to 320W output, the SPACES feature uninterruptible power management and distribution system to deliver power for military environments.

Capable of deploying in less than a minute, the plug and play SPACES has no user controls and reduces the use of number of re-supply trucks, as well as batteries weight that each Marine has to carry for the mission.