While its contributions to satellites may not garner the media attention that some of the bigger companies get, Blacksburg, Va.-based VPT Inc. still has something to offer in terms of building a better business model.

VPT’s primary business is providing power-conversion products for avionics, military and space applications. For the satellite industry, VPT’s power-conversion products typically reside in military satellites as well as in scientific satellites operated the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“The first big program was 1996, where we did a custom-design power supply for a space station,” VPT President and CEO Dan Sable told Satellite News. “This was a 120-volt-to- 28-volt converter [that] was going to be powering the Russian segment of the space station from the U.S. segment. It was a totally custom design. It can be rather challenging to make a profit on something like that.” Contributing to that challenge was the amount of quality requirements and specifications as well as the fact that only one was being built, Sable noted.

And while Sable said everything worked out through the completion of the space station project, “the focus at the company at that time started going more toward standard products.” That led to a joint venture with Delta Electronics in high-reliability hybrid DC-to-DC power converters using standardized products.

And although “nothing is standard product when you get in to space realm,” Sable noted, “standard product hybrid DC to DC converters could be available much cheaper with much shorter lead time and more proven reliability than a custom design.” In the end, that means VPT uses a standard base model, and it can then build in the necessary bells and whistles to customize the power-conversion product to meet the needs of the customer. “That was the lesson we learned from the space station, where we did a totally custom design from the ground up and realized that’s pretty difficult to make money on.”

(Dan Sable, VPT, sable@VPT-Inc.com)