POTSDAM — The CEO of LC Drives, a startup firm operating at the Clarkson University incubator center in Potsdam, says the company remains in the development stage as it seeks to help create better electric motors.

LC Drives was among 13 upstate New York companies that won funding awards in the 14th round of CenterState CEO’s Grants for Growth program. The organization announced the awards at an Aug. 27 event at the Syracuse Tech Garden. LC Drives will receive $125,000, according to CenterState CEO.

“We’re developing the next generation of electric motors. The motors are smaller, lighter, more efficient, and cheaper than conventional motors,” Russel Marvin, the firm’s CEO, tells CNYBJ in a Sept. 28 interview.

LC Drives plans to manufacture the motors and ship them to customers and markets “around the world,” he adds.

The firm is targeting the oil and gas drilling, wind turbine, industrial, mining, marine propulsion, and electric-vehicle propulsion markets. 

“With it being the next generation in electric machines in the larger-size range, there are many different markets that make sense,” says Marvin. 

Marvin, the firm’s majority owner, is among five people who founded and own the company, he says. 

LC Drives employs 10 people, including six part-time workers. 

“There’s … four of us putting full energy into the company,” says Marvin.

The name LC Drives comes from the term lightweight commutated drives. 

“Our electric motors are lightweight and commutated, so it came off of the technical details of when we formed,” says Marvin.

“So we use permanent magna technology to be able to make [the motor] smaller and so … customers can either get more power in the same space, [have it] weigh less, or be higher performance, or some combination thereof. So it’s really something we believe, at least for larger-size motors, to be the next generation in electric motors you’re going to see around the world,” Marvin explained to CNYBJ at the Aug. 27 CenterState CEO event.

Besides the Grants for Growth award, LC Drives has also secured funding through federal programs. They include the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense. 

It has also secured funding through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the Seaway Private Equity Corp., which is based in Potsdam. 

LC Drives has accumulated more than $1 million in funding so far, says Marvin.

NYSERDA announced a $75,000 award for LC Drives in April 2014 for its work in reducing the cost of hybrid-bus motors. The Potsdam firm is using that funding as it works with Smithtown, New York–based Unique Technical Services LLC to expand the technology for use in hybrid electric buses.

The companies are working to improve motor design to “cut in half” the cost of bus-motor systems.

Prior to launching LC Drives, Marvin founded and operated a company called Optiwind in Goshen, Connecticut, which developed wind turbines. The firm no longer operates. 

Marvin started LC Drives while living in Connecticut and eventually moved it to the Clarkson incubator center in 2013 “to take advantage of all the resources available,” he says.

Marvin earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Clarkson in 1988, according to his LinkedIn page.