KEY POINTS:
Canterbury University students whipped up a perfect storm yesterday, firing huge lightning bolts from an array of technical devices aimed at generating more electrical engineers.
Billed as the "world's first triple lightning display", the university's electric power engineering centre demonstrated the power of electricity in the hope of enticing more students to consider electrical engineering as a career option.
"People have this misconception that electric power engineering is all about technology," said centre manager Joseph Lawrence.
"Electricity has been around for donkey's years. They take it for granted.
"What they don't realise is that things are moving forward, the technology's innovative [and] things are getting smaller, smarter, cheaper," Mr Lawrence said.
With electric vehicles coming on to the domestic market and renewable energy technologies under development, electrical energy was the key to the future.
"Electric power engineers will be the people doing the work that will ensure New Zealand's energy future," Mr Lawrence said.
Established in 2002, the university's electric power engineering centre has bucked a worldwide student trend away from electric power research.
Mr Lawrence wrote the centre's business plan as an electrical engineering student at the university and has been with the centre since its inception.
"When we first started, it was a dying discipline and the university was thinking of canning the whole power programme."
Mr Lawrence said about 40 students a year were now studying electric power engineering at the centre.
The showcase of students' projects included displays of electric vehicles and renewable energy options.
Mr Lawrence said the centre held the "unofficial world" record for manmade lightning bolts more than 70 metres long.
One student would demonstrate an array of lightning generated by a Tesla coil developed in the 1890s by Nicola Tesla, considered the father of modern alternating current electricity - "the stuff we use in our homes".
Tesla gained a place in the Guinness Book of World Records when he created the longest man-made lightning bolt - 42 metres.
Mr Lawrence said: "We've actually done a 70-metre lightning bolt outdoors."
He said he believed the centre could claim a Guinness record, "but we haven't approached them".
NZPA
