July 29, 2014
When it comes to resiliency, utilities are taking many different paths. Some are raising substations to protect them from flooding. Others are replacing wood utility poles with metal ones, and others still are investing in state-of-the-art software and hardware that allows the grid to automatically isolate faults.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, however, has other ideas about what a resilient grid might look like. As part of its aptly named Resilient Electric Grid, or REG, project, DHS is giving $60 million to AMSC and Commonwealth Edison to install a high-temperature superconductor cable to increase the resilience of ComEd’s system in Chicago.
The project will be both the first commercial application of a superconductor cable for resiliency in the U.S., and, at more than 3 miles long, the largest project of this type in the world. The cables will connect critical substations in the Chicago’s downtown business district.
Instead of building in redundancy, such as additional substations, the superconductor cable will provide enhanced capacity and reliability. The high-energy-density wire, which can carry about ten times the power of traditional cable, can automatically contain faults within the wire. The cables conduct electricity with near zero resistance at -320°F, compared to -460°F for traditional superconductor cables.
Superconductor cable projects have popped up worldwide in the past five years or so, but so far, they have yet to take off for grid applications. LS Cable and AMSC are working together in South Korea with KEPCO on a HVDC superconductor cable. In Germany, Nexans is replacing a high-voltage cable with a superconductor cable less than a mile long.
“Utilities around the world are investing tens of billions of dollars on smart grid technology designed in part to create a more redundant and resilient grid,” said Daniel McGahn, President and CEO, AMSC.
