Sky the limit for cool Kiwi wire

This week the hottest minds in the extremely cool technology of high temperature superconductors meet in Wellington.

The 18th International Superconductivity Industry Summit at Te Papa will bring together some of the sharpest brains and muscle in the highly charged industry.

Shaun Coffey, chief executive of Lower Hutt technology and research hub IRL, said it was a great accolade to be holding the conference in Wellington, and it pointed to just how far New Zealand had come in the high-temperature superconductor industry.

New Zealand's capabilities in HTS had been building over two decades and IRL's research was central to that. "We have an enormous know-how in this country that holds the key to unlocking the commercial potential in this technology."

Kiwi firms were already producing products in the market using HTS technology, and the sky was the limit for what could be done with it.

HTS technology referred to materials that could transmit electricity without resistance, creating a transmission channel that did not heat up and had zero energy loss.

The name came from the relatively high temperature the technology ran at, -196 degrees Celsius, compared to older technology that did the same thing at -273C.

The change in temperature cut the cost of superconducting and turned it into a viable proposition. Kiwi-made superconductor wires could carry up to 10 times the current of copper wires of the same size.

The global HTS industry was on the cusp of a growth explosion, predicted to be worth more than US $2 billion (NZ$2.9b) by 2020.

"It can bring a whole lot of new efficiencies into power and energy systems, it can serve the needs of clean technologies. It's set to expand very quickly over the next decade," Mr Coffey said.

The attendees were the key individuals in the global industry and were keen to learn from New Zealand's experiences, he said.

Mr Coffey said the focus of the conference was around the application of the technology rather than sharing the industrial secrets of HTS.

"It's an industrial society meeting, it's not a scientific meeting. New Zealand has a strong intellectual property position, it's a case of growing out of what are our first steps into the market. The sky is the limit with the groundbreaking and revolutionary types of applications with HTS."

While there had been a lot of private sector investment in the technology internationally, Mr Coffey admitted New Zealand had a long way to go in terms of investment availability.

"We have the muscle, we have the intellectual grunt, we have the knowhow, but our capital markets are stretched. However, we are confident that over time building the right partnerships onshore and offshore will give us the capacity to develop further."

- © Fairfax NZ News