Cable guy proves a Hong Kong design can compete globally
Matthew Lam put his knowledge of fibre optics to good use in developing a system to prevent electrical meltdowns
There’s a lot of talk about “smart cities” lately. What makes a city smart?
“Most people think of it on the consumer level: how can I control my room lights with my phone? We have smart phones, smart furniture, the Internet of Things,” says Matthew Lam Siu-ming, CEO of Optical Sensing. “But not many realise what smart cities really need is smart infrastructure.”
A few years back, Lam was chatting with a friend who supplies buildings with electrical systems about the headaches caused by exploding power cables. He found out people had no way to detect defects that might lead to such accidents. An electronic engineer, Lam thought there must be a way.
Turns out, Hong Kong’s public utility systems haven’t really upgraded their technology for years. So Lam and his friend decided to set up a company researching and developing “smart infrastructure”.
Having worked for years in telecommunications, Lam was familiar with fibre optics and understood that apart from being brilliant at sending data, silicon dioxide is sensitive to heat.
So the company designed a “distribution temperature sensing system”, to detect abnormalities through heat changes. Laser pulses are shot up an optical fibre cable that’s run alongside, say, power lines or gas pipes, and the reflected beam will tell of any defect, which can be located to a range of half a metre, offering early warnings against meltdowns.
We take power for granted in Hong Kong – I flick a switch, my light turns on. But ... something will go wrong eventually
The design is now patented in Hong Kong and mainland China, and the company is developing the system to expand its applications, such as to detect pressure.
“We take power for granted in Hong Kong – I flick a switch, my light turns on. But these systems can’t stay perfect forever; something will go wrong eventually,” Lam says, “And while failures don’t happen very frequently, when they do, they can be disastrous.”
In 2014, for example, an underground propene leakage in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung city resulted in a series of deadly explosions that killed 32 people.
Luckily, Hong Kong has so far only suffered certain inconveniences, such as power outage in buildings or the MTR breaking down for a few hours. “Still, that’s unacceptable for big companies in a high-efficiency place like Hong Kong,” says Lam.
The railway giant is now one of Lam’s clients, as is the new terminal at Jakarta’s international airport.
One of the biggest challenges Lam has faced in running his tech start-up is the fact that Hong Kong hasn’t had much of an industry, until recently.
He’s had a hard time convincing international clients of the merits of a local invention. “When I was pitching this big state-owned company in Singapore, they grilled me so much: ‘Hong Kong does innovation technology?’ It’s pretty embarrassing.
“So I was overjoyed when they offered to be our exclusive distributor – we proved a Hong Kong design was good enough to be adopted overseas.”
Lam sees great potential in the city and its residents to succeed in inno-tech, and laments the lack of a good atmosphere. “I’ve had people telling me, ‘I bought a flat, then sold it, and made $5 million. When will you ever see $5 million doing R&D?’ True, but is that what society is all about?”
