Superconducting magnetic storage: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Cost is set by the superconducting wire, the cryogenic cooling that keeps the coil below its critical temperature, and the power converters. Only a handful of units exist, so there is no market price, just one-off project costs.
No public price Superconducting magnetic storage has no public monthly price series: Experimental, built as one-off projects; no public price exists.What its price moves with
Most low-temperature superconducting coils are wound from niobium-titanium wire, which needs niobium mined mainly in Brazil. Wire is a large part of the build cost, so niobium supply matters, though niobium has no public price series here.
No public price for niobium, so the link is explained in words only.Low-temperature coils sit in liquid helium. Helium is scarce, produced mainly as a by-product of natural gas, and its price has swung sharply in shortages, raising running costs and pushing designers toward high-temperature superconductors cooled by cheaper means.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.High-temperature superconducting tapes work in liquid nitrogen, which is cheap and plentiful because it comes from air separation. This makes cooling far less costly than with helium, but the tapes themselves remain expensive, so nitrogen prices barely affect total cost.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Every SMES coil needs inverters and converters to charge and discharge it on the grid. These are bought as standard power electronics, so transformer and converter prices form part of the project cost. SMES itself has no price series, so no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.SMES and supercapacitors both deliver very fast bursts of power for short periods, for example to protect sensitive factories from voltage dips. Supercapacitors are cheaper and simpler, which is a main reason SMES remains confined to niche and research uses.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Flywheels also store short bursts of energy for grid stability and backup, using steel or carbon-fibre rotors instead of a magnetic field. They need no cryogenics, so they usually win on cost against SMES for the same duty.
No public price for flywheels and small mechanical stores, so the link is explained in words only.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.