Getting Up Close and Personal With High-Voltage Electricity

Photo: Robert Leroux

As director of innovation at KEMA Laboratories in Arnhem, Netherlands, René Smeets is no stranger to power. The lab tests circuit breakers and transformers built for ultrahigh-voltage (UHV) transmission systems, ensuring that these components can control the titanic current flows unleashed during short circuits. KEMA’s strategies to mimic those extreme conditions in the lab, which Smeets describes in an article in the latest issue of Spectrum, give him an intimate understanding of how the components will perform when they’re deployed in vast, nation-spanning transmission networks.

Sometimes, however, this expert likes to get a broader view and see the equipment he tests in its natural habitat. In September, while in Shanghai for a meeting convened by the State Grid Corp. of China, Smeets and other UHV specialists got a tour of State Grid’s nearby Liantang substation (shown in the photo above). The utility says this facility, which receives electricity from coal-fired power plants in the interior province of Anhui, handles more high-voltage power than any other substation in the world. The brand new 1,100-kilovolt transmission system routinely delivers 6,900 megawatts of power to Shanghai. State Grid already has plans to scale it up to an astounding 10,000 MW.

What impressed Smeets most in this superlative substation? “All the components used in the station were Chinese-made,” he says. This fact didn’t surprise him, as KEMA Labs has tested many pieces of Chinese equipment in recent years. But it did demonstrate that China has developed a world-leading UHV industry. It’s an exciting time to be a UHV tourist, Smeets says: India’s Power Grid Corp. is now building a 1,200‑kV network, which will set a new mark for the highest-voltage transmission system. “It will be the pride of India,” Smeets says. He’s looking forward to a tour.