Scaling Power Conversion Test at Startup Speed

Building for Scale from Day One

When I joined Lunar Energy more than five years ago, we were still defining what the company could become. From the beginning, our focus was clear: build better, longer-lasting power conversion and energy storage systems in a way that would support growth rather than limit it later.

That philosophy extended directly to test. As a startup, we did not have the luxury of large teams or fragmented ownership. Our test organization became the de facto validation partner across the company, supporting development, qualification, reliability, and end-of-line production testing.

Owning Test Development In-House

One decision we made early was to keep all test development in-house. We wanted to retain control over our test IP, avoid vendor lock-in, and ensure that test knowledge evolved alongside our products. Today, our team supports dozens of tester variants spanning controller embedded firmware, wireless communications interfaces, and AC/DC power conversion components.

That choice is tightly coupled with our approach to manufacturing. By keeping manufacturing local and closely aligned with our engineering teams, we maintain a short feedback loop between design, test, and production. Being in the same time zone—or one nearby—allows us to provide immediate support, troubleshoot issues in real time, and implement engineering changes quickly without slowing down production or overloading the team.

Owning both test development and close manufacturing collaboration allows us to operate with a “trust but verify” mindset. We have direct visibility into yields, tester behavior, and process health so we can act on that data immediately. This tight integration would be difficult to achieve with fragmented tooling or outsourced test development.

Figure 1: Close-to-home manufacturing enables real-time problem solving, faster ramp, and consistent product quality.

Doing this with a small team requires discipline. If every variant required a new test system or bespoke code, we would not be able to keep up.

Early Lessons from Reliability Testing

Before scaling production, we invested heavily in reliability and accelerated life testing. We built large test rigs capable of testing 20 to 30 units in parallel, applying electrical stress and abuse conditions to validate long-term performance and derive meaningful warranty models.

These early programs shaped our thinking. We learned that reusability and repeatability were not just “nice-to-have” features but were actually essential to operating efficiently.

Why Fragmented Test Approaches Fall Short

Traditional end-of-line test setups often separate controller testing from power electronics validation. We quickly saw that this approach would create duplicated test logic, synchronization challenges, and maintenance overhead as our product portfolio expanded across inverters, energy storage, converters, and others.

More importantly, fragmentation made it harder to maintain traceability. When test coverage grows, the ability to correlate results across devices, revisions, and time becomes critical.

Standardizing on a Unified NI Architecture

To avoid these pitfalls, we standardized on an NI product-based test architecture built around clearly defined roles rather than disconnected tools.

Figure 2: Lunar Energy’s NI product-based system architecture enables automated test, third-party integration, and centralized asset and data management.

NI PXI measurement and instrumentation modules provide the deterministic signal acquisition, communication, and synchronization layer which forms the backbone for precise, repeatable power and control testing. On top of that infrastructure, LabVIEW serves as the integration layer that allows us to orchestrate both NI and third-party instruments within a single test environment.

NI TestStand acts as the sequencing engine and gives us a consistent framework for executing tests across dozens of variants, while NI VeriStand supports real-time control and closed-loop testing where deterministic behavior is required. NI SystemLink software completes the architecture by centralizing test data, configuration, and system visibility, thereby enabling traceability and long-term maintainability across our growing fleet of test stations.

Together, this architecture creates a unified environment for controller and power electronics testing while still integrating third-party instruments where needed, allowing us to separate what we are testing from how the test is executed. We can build modular test sequences that are reused across variants instead of rewritten, while deterministic synchronization ensures measurements, control actions, and power stimuli remain tightly aligned even as systems scale and evolve.

Scaling Output Without Scaling Headcount

As production ramped, the benefits became clear. We could support more products, more variants, and more test coverage without proportionally increasing team size. Engineers could move seamlessly from development debug to production validation using the same infrastructure and test logic. Because data is logged consistently and centrally, traceability became a built-in feature rather than an afterthought.

Punching Above Our Weight

Today, our test systems allow us to operate at the scale and pace of a far larger company. The tools fade into the background, which is exactly what we want—they enable execution rather than becoming the work themselves. We are harvesting proven, cutting-edge tools not to experiment with infrastructure but to ship reliable products faster and with confidence.

Figure 3: NI-powered test stations help Lunar Energy scale faster with reusable, high-performance validation across product variants.

Built to Evolve

As Lunar continues to grow, our products and requirements will evolve. The test platform we have in place evolves with us, providing the long-term stability needed to scale without disruption. We can add new capabilities, new variants, and new validation requirements without starting over or introducing fragility.

This flexibility ensures that test will never be the bottleneck to innovation, today or years down the road.