FlyTek 180 kVA Solid-State 400 Hz Ground Power Unit

The FlyTek 180 kVA solid-state 400 Hz ground power unit supplies aircraft-standard 115/200 V 400 Hz power from a conventional 50/60 Hz industrial supply. It is supplied by FlyTek GSE, a US ground support equipment sales and service company in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, holding CAGE code 7UPL5 for US federal supply — so it can be contracted directly by US Government, Department of Defense and Air Force base buyers. The unit is manufactured in Portugal, a Trade Agreements Act designated country, making it TAA-compliant for US federal procurement, though not a Buy American end product.

Its defining feature is the dual-output architecture: the 180 kVA capacity is delivered as two galvanically isolated 90 kVA outputs, allowing simultaneous supply to two independent aircraft from a single machine rather than committing the full rating to one stand. For operators running two narrowbody positions, or a hangar bay with more than one aircraft under maintenance, this halves the number of machines required. Where a single 180 kVA feed is needed, the split architecture is a genuine constraint and should be checked against the aircraft requirement before specifying.

The unit is trolley-mounted on pneumatic tyres for hangar and ramp use, with a maximum towing speed of 25 km/h — it is a mobile GPU, not a fixed point-of-use installation, and cannot substitute for a permanently installed low-profile converter without confirmation from the manufacturer. Ambient operating range is −40 °C to +40 °C, below the +55 °C often specified for Gulf and desert operations. Construction is an IP55 enclosure with C5-M coating for corrosive and coastal environments, forced-air cooled with variable fan speed. Alternative input voltages, output configurations and electronic overload limits are available on request.

Electrically it uses an IGBT four-quadrant rectifier with unity power factor correction feeding a vector-control inverter, quoted at ±1% static voltage regulation across 0–100% load, ±0.01% crystal-controlled frequency stability, output THD below 2% on linear loads and input current distortion below 1.5% THDi at full load. Overall efficiency runs 90–95%, reaching approximately 94% at full output, with no-load losses under 1% and a 20 W green standby mode. Overload capability is staged: 150% continuous on the power stage, 120% continuous on magnetics, and 120% for 600 s, 150% for 60 s and 200% for 2 s at the regulator — the profile needed to ride through aircraft inrush without nuisance shutdown. The unit is no-break power transfer (NBPT) compatible, with automatic output voltage compensation either load-dependent or via remote feedback at the aircraft plug.