Yoon Jae-in, CEO of LS Cable & System (Photos: LS C&S)

Korea is poised to command a leadership role in the global market of superconducting cables, dubbed “Dream Cables,” outbidding front-runner players from advanced countries. Superconducting cables, which are made with special ceramics and cooled to minus-196 degrees Celsius, have almost no electricity loss. 

LS Cable & System (LS C&S) has successfully commercialized a 154 kV, alternating current (AC), 1 km-long superconducting cable, making it the world’s highest voltage on the longest cable, LS C&S President & CEO Yoon Jae-in said in a meeting with reporters in Tehran recently. He said, “it took 10 years for us to catch up with advanced countries and now we lead the industry in developing advanced technologies they’ve developed during the last 30 years.” 

A 138kV, AC, 600-meter-long superconducting cable installed in Long Island, New York, has been listed as the world’s highest voltage, longest superconducting technology.

Germany and Japan have led in the technology of producing superconducting cables, while the United States has excelled in terms of technology application. But LS C&S’s latest commercialization of the technology has earned the Korean company the top position in terms of superconducting cable production and technology application. 

LS C&S researchers had experienced numerous failures in the race with global leaders, but they made a breakthrough feat in overcoming them, LS C&S President Yoon said. 

Superconducting cables will bring tremendous changes in the underground power grid infrastructure, reducing the cables to one-fifth of the size of conventional copper cables. That cuts space by 60 percent in creating new underground cable lines, Yoon said. 

Underground space utilization can be dramatically enhanced when urbanization makes it hard to install new underground cables, he added. Just replacing conventional cables with superconducting cables could raise electricity transmission capacity five-fold to 10-fold. 

Major countries, including the United States, China and India, are scrambling to commercialize superconducting cable technologies by implementing projects which cost hundreds of billions of won. LS C&S has become the sole successful bidder of a conformity bidding project, outbidding European players. 

LS Cable Asia, a holding company of LS-VINA and LSCA, LS C&S operations in Vietnam, is to be listed on the Korean bourse. 

Energy demand is on the rise due to urbanization and industrialization, and the demand for electricity projects is also forecast to rise, said President Yoon, adding that LS C&S Asia’s will likely make strides in consideration of growth potential of Vietnam and its neighboring Southeast Asian countries. 

LS C&S’s Wuxi plant in China. (Photos:LS C&S)

LS Cable & System Supplies Electric Vehicle Parts to China’s Beijing Automotive 

LS Cable & System has entered into a contract with Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. Ltd. (BAIC) for the supply of a harness for electric vehicles. The company is supplying parts to BAIC, a state-owned enterprise. LS Cable & System is accelerating its advance into the Chinese electric vehicle parts market. 

BYD is the No. 1 Chinese electric vehicle maker and Dongfeng Motor Group is the 2nd largest automaker in China.

LS Cable & System’s products will be installed in the new EV200 model that Beijing Automotive Industry is scheduled to release this coming August. As the world’s 10th largest electric vehicle maker, BAIC is planning to develop 14 environment-friendly cars by 2017 and establish a new plant in a bid to reinforce related businesses. LS Cable & System is planning to capitalize on this contract to expand its contracts to models other than the EV200, and reinforce marketing with a focus on other state-owned automakers.

“We were able to beat major Chinese electric component makers and be selected as a vendor by promptly providing products that meet customer needs in the process of developing new cars and thus winning the customer’s trust,” said Jae-in Yoon, CEO of LS Cable & System. “The high-voltage harness is one of the future growth engines of LS Cable & System. We are planning to secure quality and price competitiveness and take the initiative in the Chinese electric vehicle parts market that is growing quickly.”