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Forewords and guest editors

Dr. Mohammad Yazdani-Asrami

Sažetak

Estimating that the global electricity demand will be growing 2.1 % per year to 2040, many different interventions including operational, technological, as well as policy and investment-based decisions are needed to make modern power systems - one of the most important infrastructures in modern society - more flexible, more reliable, more resilient, more compact, more efficient, and more affordable. With this ever-increasing load demand in the modern society, energy loss values, efficiency rates, reliability, and short circuit level of the power network are major concerns. On the other hand, there are environmental issues that utilities or network operators need to address, including price of land, CO2 footprint, and concerns related to oils used in the apparatus or their recycling after the end of life. In addition, climate change and global warming concerns will make production of the traditional conductors very expensive over the next two decades, as their production is linked with mining activities, and then proper purification process which are both sources of pollution. Therefore, these issues raise a strong need for game-changing dramatical solutions to decrease losses, reduce environmental footprint, increase efficiency and reliability. Cryo-electrification of the power system that takes advantage of cryogenic and superconductivity technologies would be this game-changer. Superconductors with their much higher current density, near zero resistance, and almost loss-free performance seem to be a viable solution for the replacement of the conventional conductors such as copper and aluminium. Superconductivity is a phase of material at cryogenic temperatures - in some specific metals or alloys - which can be defined with three critical limiting factors, i.e., critical temperature, critical current density, and critical field. Superconductors carry 100 to 500 times – depending on operating condition - higher current compared with copper, almost with no loss if they work within the three aforementioned limits.
Applied superconductivity offers huge opportunities for optimization and modernization of whole energy and power systems for making it more efficient, compact, smarter, reliable, lighter, sustainable, and environmentally friendly by using physical essence and attribute of superconductors and implementing them into the products. The success of superconductivity, however, depends on the overcoming challenges such as initial purchasing cost, as well as technical issues. The power transformers, power cables, and fault current limiters are the most important conventional apparatus in the power network so that their replacement with superconducting versions sound promising.
Some of the technical challenges that need to be addressed in the current decade are as follows:
• Superconductor manufacturing issue of producing longer length of tapes / wires,
• Tape / wire final price,
• Discovery and fabrication of superconductors with a higher critical temperature,
• Invention of new or improvement of existing cryocoolers and cooling systems,
• Overcoming technical issues in design and development of superconducting devices.
I believe that working on the following topics would be part of the roadmap for superconductivity in power network or transportation applications:
• Focusing on manufacturing of cheaper wires / tapes
• Application of artificial intelligence for smarter manufacturing and condition monitoring of superconducting devices,
• Integration of magnesium diboride into superconducting devices,
• Using new coolants such as hydrogen for making the free cooling systems where possible, especially in renewable energy plants,
• Integrating DC power cables in long HVDC transmission lines,
• Additive manufacturing for faster, more precise, and smarter manufacturing of superconducting devices,
• Recycling of superconducting components and devices.
This special issue aims to provide a forum for the latest developments, future plans, and long-term roadmap for superconductivity in power grid applications. The focus was on the achievements of superconductivity-based technological developments, and applications in transmission, and distribution of electricity, fault current limitation, loss evaluation, feasibility studies. Topics ranged from an individual device to integrated systems.
All the papers published in this special edition underwent stringent single-blinded peer-review process involving a minimum of two reviewers comprising internal (editorial board of the magazine) as well as external referees. This was to ensure that the quality of the papers justified the high expectation of Transformers Magazine editorial board, which is renowned as one of the most important technical magazines on the topic in the world. We thank the authors for agreeing to publish their papers in this special edition, and the guest editors and reviewers involved in the publishing process of these papers.
We hope that this special edition will shed a light on the disruptive innovation in the field of applied superconductivity that is expected to change and modernize the future power networks. In addition, we aim for motivating the utility and power network stakeholders to invest in the applied superconductivity and cryo-electrification for reaching to this modernized future network.

Dr. Mohammad Yazdani-Asrami,
Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Special Edition Superconductivity

Ključne riječi

Hrčak ID:

263813

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/263813

Datum izdavanja:

20.8.2021.

Posjeta: 615 *