IEC highlights trends in making transmission more efficient

	Efficient Electrical Energy Transmission and Distribution

The IEC has produced a website section and brochure mapping out the IEC’s work in electricity transmission, highlighting the standards currently available, and offering some insights into those technologies that might have the potential to deliver increased efficiencies in this most fundamental area of the world’s electricity supply chain.

While the IEC maintains that the current technologies do offer very efficient solutions, there are areas for improvement. The site explains the loss which can be attributed to the "Joule" effect which accounts for losses of about 2.5 % in transmission cables, while the losses in transformers range between 1 % and 2 %. The site says that "Saving just 1% on the electrical energy produced by a power plant of 1 000 megawatts means transmitting 10 MW more to consumers, which is far from negligible: with the same energy we can supply 1 000 – 2 000 more homes."

Looking to current and future IEC work in this area, the site focuses on high efficiency transformers, superconductivity, superconducting transformers and high temperature superconducting cables.