A full-scale factory could be in the future of the Capital Region if a $500 million power electronics manufacturing consortium takes off, General Electric Co. and SUNY Polytechnic Institute said.

The disclosure came Wednesday at a semiconductor supplier conference.

GE and SUNY Poly announced the creation of the Albany consortium in July to commercialize GE's silicon carbide technology for use in power electronics chips.

The chips could be used in everything from airplanes to electric cars and wind turbines.

Today, the chips that handle power in electronic devices are made from silicon wafers, like their logic chip counterparts that are the brains of smart phones and computers.

But silicon carbide, which has the strength of diamonds, is more durable and can handle much more electricity and heat than silicon. As a result, the chips can be made much smaller, and cheaper.

The group formed by GE and SUNY Poly, known as the New York Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium, is building a manufacturing line at SUNY Poly's Albany campus that is expected to be ready by 2017 and would serve a variety of industrial customers, including GE.

Danielle Merfeld, who is leading GE's silicon carbide program, spoke about the partnership at the Northeast Semi Supply Conference held Wednesday at the SUNY Poly campus.

She said that the manufacturing line at SUNY Poly would be cable of processing 30,000 wafers a year. That would capture about 10 percent of the market for silicon carbide power chips, which is about $150 million annually, Merfeld said.

But if needed, the consortium could double its capacity, she said.

"It might not fit on this campus," Merfeld said, adding that any factory would be built nearby to be close to the research done at GE Global Research in Niskayuna and at SUNY Poly.

Michael Liehr, executive vice president of innovation and technology at SUNY Poly, said it would take a while for the silicon carbide market to mature.

But if it did, the logical step would be to build a full-scale silicon carbide chip factory somewhere in the region.

"If it gets to that point, we'll find a different location," Liehr said.

Thomas Caulfield, the general manager of GlobalFoundries' Fab 8 computer chip factory in Malta, said that there were parallels between what GE envisions with silicon carbide and how GlobalFoundries decided to build its $12 billion factory in the Capital Region.

He said it all came back to the research and development done at SUNY Poly, which created the chip industry locally.

"GlobalFoundries would not be here if (SUNY Poly) didn't exist to create an ecosystem," Caulfield said.