The largest challenge with improving hydraulic system efficiency is a little thing called “Bernoulli’s Principle “. In the 1700’s, Bernoulli found that when a fluid increases in velocity, it has a corresponding pressure drop. When this pressure drop occurs without any work being performed, energy is lost in the form of heat generation into the fluid. It just so happens that we need a pressure drop to occur in order to control hydraulic flow, direction, and pressure (through valves) which means hydraulics systems are going to inherently be horribly inefficient…… Unless of course, you remove the valves from the system?
This disruptive idea – that you can remove the valves in the system, thereby achieving incredible energy savings was the foundation for the development of the Hydrapulse® technology and the launch of Terzo Power Systems, LLC. By directly controlling the fluid though a low-inertia, power dense permanent magnet motor, you can enable pressure, rate, and directional performance far exceeding current systems while improving energy efficiency by over 80% in many applications made alot of sense to build a hardware technology company around. This electric hydraulic pump technology would become the Hydrapulse®.
So, in 2014, after initial proof of concept work was validated, Terzo Power Systems, LLC. was officially founded. But it’s not easy starting a company, and it’s even harder to start a hardware company. Our first generation Hydrapulse product lacked the reliability and durability needed to survive in our tough hydraulics industry. This meant that more money was needed and more engineering skills required. But with hard work and some luck, Terzo Power Systems secured almost $4M in R&D grant funding from the California Energy Commission in 2016 to overcome the obstacles and hurdles that were standing in the way of this amazing technology in getting to market. This funding allowed us to build a state-of-the-art shop in El Dorado HIlls in 2017 with the correct testing and prototyping equipment, bring the correct engineering resources to bear, and successfully get into commercialization.
Terzo Power Systems now had distribution in all of North America, New Zealand, and Australia and is working with leading OEM manufacturers across the globe to improve their systems.
