Koontz Electric Company Joins GRAPES Center

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The GRid-Connected Advanced Power Electronics Systems, or GRAPES as it is called, has announced that a new industry partner has joined the center, Koontz Electric Company Inc.

Koontz Electric joins 17 other industrial partners and one government partner in supporting the research of nine faculty members at the University of Arkansas and the University of South Carolina in this area.

For the last three years, the University of Arkansas has partnered with the University of South Carolina to operate GRAPES, one of the National Science Foundation's Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers.

Koontz Electric was founded in 1958 by Keith Koontz, and is now the largest heavy industrial electrical contractor in Arkansas. They specialize in heavy industrial electrical, instrumentation and control systems in a wide array of applications. Koontz Electric works in many areas relevant to GRAPES work, including power plants, high voltage substations and renewable energy.

Koontz Electric has earned numerous awards over the last two decades from the Associated Builders and Contractors Inc. trade association, the Engineering News Record and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. To learn more about Koontz Electric, visit its website at www.koontzelectric.com.

Members of GRAPES are very excited to welcome this organization to its Industrial Advisory Board and look forward to working with them in its mission to accelerate the adoption and insertion of power electronics into the electric grid in order to improve system stability, flexibility, robustness and economy.

Additional information about GRAPES, its projects and its partners can be seen at www.grapes.uark.edu.