High voltage takes center stage in this brand new season of Hitachi Energy's Power Pulse podcast. We promise to bring you great content from the brightest minds in the business. We'll discuss challenges, opportunities, and all the hot topics any high voltage enthusiasts or anyone interested in sustainability, for that matter, is sure to enjoy. In this episode of the podcast, we invited Markus Bujotzek to come along and tell us how high voltage products are researched and developed.
Markus is the Global Technology Manager for Circuit Breakers at Hitachi Energy. He holds a couple of impressive degrees, namely a master's in Electrical Engineering from the University of Aachen and a PhD in High Voltage Engineering from ETH Zurich. Have you ever heard of the full-electrical guy? Markus is that guy. If you haven't, there's one easy way to fix it. Stay tuned. Welcome back to our series on High Voltage with Hitachi Energy.
I'm your host, Sam Dash, and today I'm speaking with Markus Bujotzek. Hi, Markus. Thanks for joining me. Hi, Sam. So, Markus, I've been told that you are the typical full-electrical guy, which is quite a phrase. I love that as a title. I wish that was my title. You studied electrical engineering at Aachen. Is that right? Yes, it's in Germany. And did your PhD in High Voltage at ETH, which is the technical university. Is this the most common path to work in research and development?
Yes and no. I mean, it's very typical for us to be engineers, electrical engineers or mechanical engineers, but also physicists. What is maybe not the most common is, cities. Right? I mean, Aachen is quite popular. Also, ETH Zurich got popular, but we are very international. So we have with people all around the places, or the engineering part, the yes locations are not most common, but popular, I would say. And so do people call you full-electrical guy in the hallway?
No no no no no no. Maybe my boss. Yeah, yeah. Because he's a mechanical engineer. And, you know, there is, some competition– I was going to say. Between the mechanical engineers and the electrical ones already at universities. And sometimes we tease each other. Yeah, poke each other. But there is also a lot of physicists, material scientists. So, it's very multidisciplinary, I would say. But of course, engineering, we are an engineering company. Somehow I feel at least. Right? Right.
Yes. You're well placed. If I were to come to you with some brilliant idea for a new switchgear, which, you know, would be quite a leap, since I don't have the background that you do. But if I were to come to you, what process would this idea undergo on your end of things? If you would come up with a great, let's say, revolutionary idea to us, if it would be internally, we have a process to create project proposals and then develop technology.
It could be, of course, also from outside, from from university or somewhere else. Then we would draft a project proposal and start a project, an R&D project typically that it takes quite some time. So you have first some fundamental research typically or technology development and later, product development. And when you say quite some time, what's the sort of range? Like on the lower end, it would take a year and on the higher end it would take five years or is that very, very off?
That is not that off, but for, let's say for technology development. So if you want to move from one technology to another, as we are doing now in switchgear, a lot in moving from one insulating gas to another one, that can take decades, right. So I started in research like 18 years ago, and there we were already running research on alternatives to the currently used gas. SF6, this insulation gas.
And then after you have kind of reached a certain maturity of technology, technology development is kind of somehow over and you move to product development, then it takes a couple of years to develop a product and so on, 2, 3 years at least, until you have it fully out. Right? Right. So we're not talking about anything happening overnight. No. Not at all. And so once the product is deemed viable, what is the criteria that this product must follow? That's difficult to answer.
I mean there's a lot of things the product must follow. But of course, I mean there are some core pillars like sustainability, safety, but also the pure performance, technical performance it must follow. Right. So you need to fulfill certain certain ratings. So the switchgear, it's very standardized in a way. So there are international standards and and there is ratings. And you want to fulfill a certain voltage level or current level. Then you need to to show certain test duties.
This you need to test in development and later in certification. So you obtain like a... like a degree, right. At the end you go to an independent lab and get the certificate; yes, I'm allowed to call my product, you know, 420,000V breaker for 60,000 amps or whatever. Right? Right. So that's quite long process for that. Yeah. Of course. How long does this process take at minimum and what's the longest this process has taken, accounting for various obstacles along the way?
I mean, it always depends if you just do an upgrade and say, I want to move my limit from one value to another. So I want to make the switch kill the breaker, interrupting instead of 50,000 amps, that should interrupt 60,000 amps. Or if you develop a full new, the first, world-first eco-based product. Right. So this upgrade, they take - I would say at least also like two years. Right.
And when you include the technology development or a new technology like the EconiQ, that can take decades, right? Because it's not only to develop a prototype, you need to implement it in the factories. You need to have the whole supply chain. You need to test it. Just a pure type testing phase can take half a year, for instance. Right. And then, how many people are involved in that process over that whole time period from start to finish?
And then, how on earth do you sort of find those people and maintain that workforce? I can imagine there's a lot of specific training involved. Yeah. So if you take all the people involved, it's it's a lot. Right? Because as I said, it's not, there is not like a one man show there.
Right. It's always a team. And so the core R&D team, you could say for such a project to develop new product, maybe 20 people in the core, but there is easily 100 people involved; if you take the laboratories, you take supply chain, you take the factories, all around that the research before and support from research to to to answer questions in case you run into obstacles and so on. People developing simulation tools. Because we use a lot of simulation method to to do that.
So first that needs to be established. But the core team, which then really works for a couple of years on the product development, I would say that's typically like 20 people involved. Is it quite a specialized area of knowledge and expertise that you look for for those 20 or so people? And is it hard to keep them invested and make sure that they're up to date on all the newest innovation? I mean, I would say the difficulty is to, to to find the right mix of people, right.
Because you need like different disciplines. So you need mechanical engineers, flow specialists, electric field specialists whatsoever, right, for material people. But then you need them to also collaborate in a way that some people are more the practical ones to do the experiments, to, analyze the data. Others, more on the design side, the creative ones. And so you need a nice diversity somehow. Then the story works pretty well.
And well, also technical career path where you have people which are really senior and our senior principal engineers which are there since... with a knowledge of 20 years plus; those are mixed in with guys which come fresh from university or after a PhD or from research center, because we have a bit of a split also between research and development. And this research part is rather done in research, and the development, then later on, on the development side and technology centers.
And if you mix those people well then it's like self-maintaining a bit because the experience ones can educate the less experienced ones those bring the new ideas from the universities. Certain physics do not change too much, but certain methods change a lot, like design on full manufacturing or simulation method numerics, the computers getting better and 3D simulations instead of 2D and this kind of stuff.
Or is it generally your responsibility to do that curatorial work of creating that ideal recipe? I don't know exactly what do you mean with that– Sort of that varied collection of experts and people on that workforce, do you yourself sort of curate– Me personally? Yeah, Ah no, we're organized in a way. We have technology centers. So I had that job before. So I'm 18 years in a company and I was running a department within the Swiss Technology Center, where we have all the people.
Now, I'm kind of, as a global technology manager, I'm the customer to this technology center. So, they are kind of my suppliers. You can you can imagine it's like a consulting engineering company. And I go to to these technology centers and say, please develop this breaker for me. But then maintaining the team and having the line management and the right hirings and so on– That's not your job. Not anymore. I mean, I like to be involved.
And of course, we discuss with the corresponding managers of the technology centers and the department heads and so on, but now not anymore, really. But because of your experience and sort of working your way up through that ladder, you really know it intimately that whole process, it sounds like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's this thing maybe why you call me like this full-electrical guy. I really grew up in that. From the research, we are different positions in the technology center.
So I know the setups quite well. Ins and outs. What do you do specifically to make sure those products are safe at all those different stages that we’ve alluded to? I mean, there's... I mean, we work according processes, right? So we have like a certain new product introduction, roadmap and process. And then during the whole design phase, we run reviews of designs so that people document and check for risks, for safety.
There is health and safety responsible for each project and product development. And at the end, as I said, it's very standardized. So you need to fulfill international standards, international law. So if we work, for instance, with pressure devices, you have requirements that you cannot put a pressure device in the field if you do not kind of have the certification that it fulfills five times the operating pressure.
So for ease, do you try to make sure that the products across the board cover all those different international standards or do you say, this product is only going to customers in Germany so we're only going to worry about standards that are applicable to that market? Ah that's a good question. We try to be as as global as possible. So like the latest development, for instance, we certified for very big standards that international the IEC standard.
But there's also the American Standard IEEE and so on. And there we certified from the beginning for both because the effort for certification is quite high. Yeah, I would imagine. And you try to cover with that almost everything you say. Okay, I covered the IEC and I covered that IEEE, so the international one, the American one, but there is still the Japanese standard. And then there is still, as you say, especially in Germany, some special customers. They say, but I want this on top, right?
They have the customer specific requirement. Right? This is sometimes a bit difficult because you cannot kind of serve all of them at once. Right? So we try to, to really stick, to the, to the standards. But if there is of course big important customer, then there are dedicated tests for this customer. Some customers also come and they say, fine, you have this product that’s certified. But I want that to be repeated. Right. I want to be present during this testing and witness this.
Oh, interesting. So they then– We’ll run a campaign with them together sometimes. That's fascinating. Do you ever get customers saying, oh, I saw that company in Germany has that. And we're here in Canada and we want that too. But our government standards don't allow that. What do we do? No. I mean, me personally not. But there are some special customer requirements, especially big customers. They sometimes have something like their own standard. Right. They say– Oh okay.
They write a spec which is almost same thickness as the standard itself. And they say we want that. And there are other customers which do not care about certain things, right, because they're say, that's not what we have in our grids. Yeah. Typically it's okay to just follow the international ones. Yeah, right. And just that's complicated enough right? Yeah. That's a lot to navigate I'm sure. Just that. What about upgrades?
How often are products tweaked or further inspected in the lifetime of a product? I would say that's quite common, right? Because the industry is conservative. Right? We talk about electricity grid. The things are out there for 20, 30, 40 years. So the customers are not, also, some customers are not that eager to say, yeah, I want like every year a new product or something. And they say okay, show it that it works for ten years, then I might consider a new technology.
So therefore if let's say the the current product is, let's say, not good enough for some reason because also the electricity grid or the demand side changes. Right. And there is more short circuit power needed and so on and say, okay, we need the next generation. And typically it is based on on the previous product, you know, and you know what it can do and where are it's limits.
And if you hopefully understood why there are these limits, you can make the next generation more efficient, smaller, faster, better, and so on. So that's quite common. But we have now this big change from this one technology to the other. So it's a bit, I don't know, if you compare it with the car industry when, and when you have to move now to electric cars. We have the same a bit move from this one insulating gas. We have gas switchgear. So from this SF6 gas to the eco-product.
But this is really a new technology. So we kind of do not invest further to develop the next week of the SF6 technology. So you've mentioned EconiQ a few times briefly. Yeah. I feel like maybe now might be a good time to get into that more. Over the next few episodes of our podcast, we'll hear more about this innovation of EconiQ, which I understand is the eco-efficient achievement that Hitachi Energy is most proud of right now in high Voltage.
Can you tell us a bit about the process of bringing EconiQ to market and what that was like, how long it took? What were the sort of surprises and obstacles along the way in that journey? Yes, the process itself started decades ago. Right. Before you were here, I assume. Yeah, before I was here. Exactly.
So when I joined in 2006, the research center from ABB, at that time, there was already research ongoing on eco-efficient solutions because up till then, up to now we are still using the certain insulation gas SF6, which is great in all respect to the insulation interruption, what we need for our switchgear, but it has just a very high global warming potential. Actually, it's the highest one you have for a substance. And for those of us outside of the industry.
How do you measure the carbon footprint, that classification that you just said about SF6? Why is it so high? Yeah. One thing, I mean, I'm not a chemist, right. I mean, I think I should manage. It is a very stable molecule. So one thing is the lifetime, how long things survive in the atmosphere and SF6 is - that's why it's so great - it's so super stable that it survives, ten thousand years or whatever, some number. Somebody would say that it was the wrong number, but very, very long.
But for better and for worse, it doesn't break down. Exactly, it doesn't break down. And the second ingredient to get a high GWP, so global warming potential is that it has the absorption in a certain range of the spectrum. Right. So you have light coming from the sun which is mainly energy comes by UV and infrared is typically going out. But if you– it's like in a car, right. If it gets hot inside and so SF6 contributes to the screening of the radiation going out. right.
So you have a high GWP, but beside that you have excellent properties. It's super stable. It has the kind of– it guages in the right range between, in our operating temperatures and operating pressures. It has great insulation properties, it can withstand three times the withstand of air. If you want to withstand voltage, you can make things much more compact. That's the purpose of gas insulated switchgear.
And then if you put it in high pressure even more so, you can make things very, very compact with that. It's like non-poisonous and so on. So it's very very nice property. It was used in the past lot or for various applications. But it was banned for a lot of things where you don't really need it but it is still used in power industry. I think people had it used in, Nike shoes and in tennis balls. Right? Yeah, I heard the story as well. And then some window glass.
So in the windows, in the glass. Double-glazed windows. Exactly, because it has this very good kind of big molecules does not go out. It has good insulation and so on. So it was used in tires, I heard. But I don't know if that's all. Kind of– Might all just be rumors, yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's true. But it's now it's still used for, for certain special applications and now regulations upcoming to ban it even there.
Therefore this research on the alternative: so for our eco-solution went on since decade and then at some point we've reached a level where you can develop product out of that. And we have went out with a few products and you start typically I'd say at the lower voltage, okay, that's somehow easier to achieve. And now the big kind of milestone we have reached, and last year we have put a product out for this 420,000V. So 420 kV, which is the highest voltage level in Europe, at least.
Again, for listeners who aren’t in the industry, what kind of machinery or how would we make an analogy in our heads for what uses that amount of energy? Maybe it's not about energy, but it's– you can consider the electric grid as like the road system, like you have highways, you have how do you call it; country roads and, and then the small ones. Right. And the highways in Europe at least are 420 kV. So 420,000V. The sort of grid highways.
Exactly. The grid highways. So the big ones when they are typically next to the highway. So if you go by car you, you see them right. And you need to basically switch on and off because it's a network and you need to switch. And there might be a, there might be a lightning hitting that might be something broken. A tree falls in the lane on something. So you need circuit-breakers to interrupt it. And you could say that if you go up in voltage it becomes more difficult to switch then, right.
At home you have also circuit-breaker installed which you have in your cabinet where you know these small circuit-breakers. Which is sort of the more electricity that's running through the circuit-breakers, the harder it is. Exactly. So the more voltage, the harder it is to manage and the more the short circuit power. So the more, if you create a short circuit on this highway. Right. This is a lot of power behind which you need to interrupt and to stop.
Yeah. When you develop a new technology, therefore it will started life from the bottom from the country road somehow, rght. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But last year we put out this 420 kV breaker. And this is the big kind of achievement and milestone also to demonstrate that the technology can cover everything, right. That you can phase out SF6 and cover all you need and next ones on the roadmap by 550 is now under development. Actually will be released soon, which is the highest voltage level in US.
Maybe they have even thousand, I don't know, 800. I think they have a small. But 550 is... The longer the distance the bigger is the voltage typically. I see. Okay Because you want to minimize your losses. You want to put a lot of energy from A to B. And the higher you go up in voltage, the more you can transmit with kind of the same current or lower current. And then you have for long distance high voltages.
So presumably those higher voltage circuit-breakers are going to be more of interest to larger countries with larger expenses to travel. Is that right? Yes. For those above 420 kV, because 420 kV is really this grid in Europe and other countries, of course, are also 420 kV, but for the bigger countries like U.S or China, they have a lot of 550 kV or even 800 kV or some have even 1100 kV. This we don't have here because it's not economical in a way. Right.
Because you don't have such a big distance to reach. Right. And you need the transformers to go up and down in voltage and so on. And so what's an example of one of the hurdles you've had in making EconiQ work for those larger voltages? Oh, that's a good question. One hurdle I would say during the development phase is that before we were talking about this tweaking and upgrades, right. So if you start developing something new, then you would realize what you are missing.
Because if you say I base it on this one, an upgrade and then but now on what do I base it, right. So you start this fundamental discussion, should I use this technology or that? So we have single-motion, double-motion, self-blast, puffer breakers. There's a lot of different technologies. So first you need to agree among all this experts what is the best choice to start with. And so is there a lot of sort of arguing and discussion around which way to go? Up to even personal favorites, right.
And yeah, and then there is also, you need then all the tools. Right. Because our tools, we use a lot of simulation tools and those we have developed over the last decades and improved. And now suddenly you need to do all your simulations for a new gas and those simulation tools, you need electric data, thermodynamic data. And this data first needs to be established to be found and validated, actually, because we don't want to do trial and error to be fast and efficient.
You want to predict something really well. And if you want to do a slow simulation inside a gas circuit-breaker, for instance, you need thermodynamic properties of the gas, let's say over temperatures from 1 to – I don't know – more than 100 bars and temperatures, from 0 to 20,000 Kelvin. Because we have temperatures like, in the plasma, which is very, very high. Right. And this data needs first to be calculated or measured by basically that's decades of stuff.
And then you need to put it in a simulation tool and you say, but is it right that we don't have any comparison. Right. Yeah, right. It’s the first time developments are a bit, exciting in a way. Right? Yeah. You're sort of out in outer space on your own without anything. So the obstacles you are asking were like, we had also, our mind on the known technology at sometimes. But that does not behave like we are used to. Right.
So then you had to adapt a tool or a model and then repeat it and things work out. Now then you can use that, of course, to the next voltage level. Next, tweaking and upgrades. You called that previously. Is that an exciting process for you? Or, I can imagine there's probably exciting elements and also times when you're just sort of scratching your head with frustration. Yes. I mean, I find it in general very exciting because it's like developing new things.
And if you look at the times we invest a few months to develop a variant or a design, and you do all this and discussions and challenging and simulations, and then you finally decide on on a certain design and then everybody's like waiting to test. Right? Because at the end you need to prove it in the test. And the rest of the, like– So everyone’s biting their nails.
Yeah. There is a chat ongoing on Teams, like, okay, now this shot is to come and so on, and people are, ‘hmmm... is it correct or not?’ Yeah. So that's quite exciting for me at least. So it's, it's fun to to see that happening and people discussing and improving this thing is quite cool. Yeah. Yeah. Why is this portfolio so important in your view? I mean the EconiQ portfolio is important for us as a company, you could say, because if you don't have it, you are out.
I would say also from the society point of view, right. We want to really go to reduce the carbon footprint, right, of the electricity grid. And this is only possible if you go and replace step by step the SF6 solutions. So it's in both terms somewhat important. And now also since it's coming, also the customers request it. They say, ‘ah yeah, we are out of this kind of fancy, prototype phase’. Like again, like with electrical cars, they were also around for 20 years, right.
And just some kind of nerdy people that had one, right? And now it's like becoming reality. The demand is up. Exactly. And then also the legislation is coming because they see, okay, there is a solution. So why should we allow the other solution to be around when it's all, environmentally– Harmful. Harmful. That's why this is like there is no way back, right? Yeah. Therefore, if we do not develop it for the company, I would say we would be out of business at some point. Yeah. Right.
So that's why it's so important to the future of Hitachi Energy is basically responding to client demand. Is that right? Yeah. Yes. Client. And yeah you could say society demand somehow, right? Social demand. Exactly. This has been terrific speaking with you. Thanks for joining us today, Markus. You've given us a really terrific peek into the complex and crucial steps in research and development at High Voltage. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Power Pulse. Until next time.
And that's it for today. We'll be back soon with some more great content. But before you go, remember to give us a follow so you don't miss an episode. Thanks for tuning in. See you soon! This episode was brought to you by Hitachi Energy. Created and introduced by Bárbara Freitas-Daniels. Content and scriptwriting by Cassandra Inay. Guest speaker Markus Bujotzek. Hosted by Sam Dash. Produced and edited by Creative Chimps.