It is interesting to note that the Japanese industrial corporations that were involved in the development of LTS transformers have not reported activities in the area of HTS transformer development. Moreover, while the electric utilities are playing a pivotal role in transformer programs in the United States and Europe, the same is not true in Japan, where the driving force for development is in industrial and academic circles, with no apparent support from the utilities. At the CEC/ICMC meeting held in May 1996 in Kitakyushu, Japan, Kazuo Funaki (1996) of Kyushu University presented details of a 500 kVA HTS transformer program that was supported by the collaborative efforts of Fuji Electric and Sumitomo Electric Corporation (SEC). This author assumes that Sumitomo was principally responsible for supplying the HTS tapes, and that the majority of the transformer design and construction tasks were assumed by Fuji Electric and Kyushu University. Table 3.6 shows the characteristics of the HTS strands and the winding sequence. Note that the matrix is pure silver, not the silver-gold alloy recommended by Iwakuma, and that the filaments are not twisted, although there have been reports from other HTS wire manufacturers that it is possible to twist multifilamentary HTS conductors.