October Canterbury Cluster Event

Our monthly Canterbury Tech Cluster events provide a great opportunity to network and listen to speakers present on a wide range of topics. Our next event will be in October and we are kindly being hosted by Ara in Kahukura(their new Engineering and Architectural Studies building). Site map.

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Outline of the evening:

5.30pm Networking, drinks and nibbles

6.00pm Canterbury Tech (David Carter), Quick Pitches & Industry news

6.25pm Evening business and technical talk

7.00pm Networking and drinks until 7.30pm

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Technical Speaker:  Steven Leftly, Director, Myovolt on Wearable Clothing Technology

Steve Leftly is a world-leading expert in the field of electronic textiles and has led research in the wearable technology field for over 18 years, authoring many patents in the field. Steve worked as research leader for the international textile technology firm Canesisdeveloping electronic textiles where he co-invented Softswitch technology. In 2004 he set up Fibretronic Ltd developing ground-breaking textile electronic solutions for many global garment brands, such as Levis, Nike, Adidas, and the North Face. Steve currently leads Sentrix Technology, working on textile based wearable technology products for sensing, performance and actuation applications in the sports markets supplying US, GB, AUS and NZ Olympic teams among others. He is also co-founder of award winning iLume Wearable Lighting technology. Recently he has co-founded and launched a new technology MYOVOLT which is leading the global innovation in wearable Localised Vibration Therapy (LVT) technology.

Talk Title: MYOVOLT- Developing a New Medical Wearable

Tracking the challenges of developing and launching Myovolt: a new class of FDA wearable technology

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Business Speaker:  Ian Williamson, Senior Engineering Tutor, Ara Institute of Canterbury

Ian is an RF and Power Systems Engineer and has worked in NZ and overseas in both disciplines. He has a keen interest and passion for renewable energy and electric vehicles. He designed his first “hybrid” EV in the mid 1970’s. He has also designed and worked on a number of renewable energy projects on and off grid. His studies have included solar design in Wales, along with wind and tidal generation in the UK, Europe and Canada.

In the last 5 years Ian has studied aspects of power supply for domestic customers in New Zealand to minimise cost, using the data from hundreds of consumers. He also passes on his knowledge as a tutor of engineering at degree and diploma level.

Talk Title:  Renewable Energy – Domestic grid-tied power generation is not financially viable in New Zealand. Get instant payback and stop blaming power companies

Generating domestic power via just any method is not financially viable in New Zealand. With all the companies out there trying to convince the public to install PV on houses with the promise of great returns and relatively short return on investment, none is really giving good advice. Along with this the power companies and lines companies are being blamed for not playing fair. This is not the complete picture and the power companies are criticised unfairly. There is more to the story and some or misreporting by the media, especially the social media. The power industry in New Zealand is vastly different from that of even our nearest neighbour Australia. Many of the facts used to promote these generating systems use another country’s situation as justification that is not appropriate.

The better resellers of PV do at least offer advice to clients to use as much of the power generated and sell very little of it back to the grid. Complaining about the low “feed-in” tariff is a waste of time. Lines companies argue in favour of a “solar charge”. But what if they begin charging households with non-electric water heating? What if you heat your water with Solar Thermal or even non-grid-tied PV? What about a fire with a “wetback” water heater? Such a charge makes no sense and difficult to justify.

The best way to save money on power is to use less. Remember that saving power is 100% efficient. What is the incentive if we are to be penalised for doing so?

Consumers can make the most of cheaper night rate power but that is not as cheap as it could be because of the house wiring variations and power company options. To set a night rate price the retailers must average night period expected prices and add a margin in case the price rises over the year on the spot market. They are taking the risk. What if the end user took the risk? Would this produce a better return that spending thousands on solar energy systems.

A period of 10-20 years before gaining any return on investment must lose out to the advantage of immediate savings. That is a no brainer.

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