High voltage takes center stage in this 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 enthusiast or anyone interested in sustainability for that matter, is sure to enjoy.
In this episode of the podcast, we will focus on the main issues affecting the high voltage industry in general, and we will also tell you how we're addressing them at Hitachi Energy. They are carbon footprint, availability, reliability. We invited Dr. Arthouros Iordanidis to come in and tell you all about it. He holds a PhD in Industrial Processes and Products, and is the current Head of Circuit Breaker and Grid Components at Hitachi Energy.
His background encompasses R&D and portfolio management. Originally from Greece, he's now based in Zurich. Welcome back to Power Pulse. I'm your host, Sam Dash, and today I'm speaking with Arthouros Iordanidis, head of GPG Circuit Breaker and Grid Components at High Voltage. Arthouros, hello. Hi, Sam. Arthouros, let's get right into it. Can you share a bit of your background and tell us what inspired you to pursue a career in the high voltage energy industry?
Well, as always, it happens, there is a mix of logic and some things that happen by chance. I wanted to do rocket science. That's the reason I'm in Hitachi Energy in High Voltage. Of course, you might ask, that sounds like a failure. It's not rockets that we are building in Hitachi Energy. Well, actually, sort of the contrary. I sort of imagined there must be some sort of connection. Now, I'm thinking Hitachi Energy might be working on rockets.
It is working on technologies which are resembling a lot rockets and have a lot in common. So rocket science or airspace was something that I studied, I studied the phenomenon, the physics, how the air flows around the wing of a plane and lifts it up; or how the rocket comes back to the Earth after launching to the space; Or how reactive flows go through a reactor. For example, to generate hydrogen from methanol or from biogas. This is what I studied.
And once I have seen an ad coming from here, from Switzerland, from corporate research. They were asking for Compositional scientists, for fluid dynamics, continuum mechanics in high voltage equipment, circuit breakers. I thought the name sounds interesting. Let's look what is inside. It was very interesting that when I looked inside, what happens in the circuit breaker, the phenomena are pretty much the same; to very good extent, the same as around the wing of the airplane. Right?
So there is a flow of the gas, supersonic flow as in the jet. And one has to understand how this flows, in order to be able to develop reliable equipment. Later I realized that it's actually it's much more complex than the flow around the wing. And the reason is that for the equipment, for our high voltage equipment, to be able to function, to interrupt the current, it always ignites an arc. So that's kind of a small lightning in the device.
And it creates a very hot medium plasma with a temperature of 20,000 Kelvin or so. That is, the surface of the sun is 5,000 Kelvin. This one is 20,000. So it's much hotter than the sun. Right. And this phenomena, this flow, supersonic flow happens at the same time when this arc is burning. And understanding this and modeling that and designing based on the understanding is really rocket science. So that is the reason why I ended up in high voltage R&D at that time.
Well, that actually leads me nicely to my next question, which is what do you enjoy most about being involved in high voltage energy? So I think I'm lucky that there were several stages of things that I have been enjoying otherwise would have been boring for last almost 20 years that I’m in. Yeah, right in the beginning was what I told you – understanding of those thing that was motivating me to wake up and go to my office and make the next step.
That's what got you in every day, was that connection to the rocket science that you had studied. The challenge is still there. Yeah. And the benefit that the understanding would bring. So I was really a scientist, and that was driving me. Over time, it has changed, of course,. When I look now, as of today, I do a bit less of those rocket science now. And luckily there are many people that continue that and do it better than what I would do today.
What I enjoy today is the purpose of the things that we are doing. I enjoy defining and implementing a strategy in our company in High Voltage, which luckily happens to be also world leader in the technology and in the market in this industry. So by defining our strategies and implementing them at the same time, we are defining what happens in the industry in the world because this company has been in the middle of it historically, and we are also in that position now.
And when I see the people, the team with whom I work, with these great people, with all this energy that enables the work that I mentioned; strategy and then implementation. That gives me the energy, the most satisfaction now and the most positive emotions now. The energy of the team and also the capability to implement that. Yeah. Terrific. It sounds like you work with some great people.
So Arthouros, it might be fair to say that many of us worldwide are used to a grid that instantly provides electricity. That is right, because the electricity or the speed of propagation is like speed of light. There's almost instant. That is. Right? Right. We demand more and more from that phenomenon where we boil a kettle or charge our phone, watch TV, and we expect our phones to charge in an instant. When they used to take maybe 24 hours.
And so this grid, as we've talked about in other episodes, has been around for a long time and relies not exclusively on many chemical agents or machinery that reduce the longevity and health of our planet. So we'll look into those agents in more detail in separate episodes. But in the meantime, I wonder if you can explain what the current carbon footprint of the existing grid equates to in sort of real terms and simple terms for our audience.
Indeed, we do use in our equipment, certain materials which are having certain carbon footprint. To give you a reference on something that we have developed also very recently and installed in the United States - there’s the first EconiQ. So SF6-free, this the material that we're talking about is SF6, which is commonly used in high voltage equipment. And we as you know, hopefully, we recently installed and energized in the US, an equipment without that gas.
So without the gas that has very high greenhouse effect. This is a perfect gas, has many other properties which are exceptionally good. Right. So it can allow very small size of the equipment. It's not toxic, not flammable. So it's very safe to use. But it has one drawback that when it's released to the atmosphere, it stays there for thousands of years and it absorbs the infrared that leaves our Earth. So this is what we call greenhouse effect. Right. And that has very strong greenhouse effect.
So some 24,000 times higher than a kilogram of CO2 in the equivalent. So we have installed devices without that gas. We manage that. An installation of a single breaker in the US that has been done. This is saving of a carbon footprint, similar to a couple of flights that fly from here, Europe to the US. So if you think that every year there are thousands of such devices installed on the earth, the industry, you can imagine that the effect is quite significant.
And when you say that it's the equivalent of a few transatlantic flights, is that what you said? Exactly, it's a jumbo jet 747 that flies from London to New York. So the equipment that you mentioned has now been installed in the US; that is SF6-free. Right. That is saving the equivalent of the damage that those airplanes cause. Exactly How often, if you imagine that this equipment is running daily, does it save that amount per day or per month or per year? What's the breakdown of that?
Well, we would have been in a pretty bad position if we would save it per day because that is a quite a significant amount. And we install one breaker, it is there installed for 30-40 years. And this is also the existing one with SF6, it's sealed and it's regulated that there should be very minimal emissions. But even with that minimal emissions, because of the properties of this gas - over 30 years, 40 years, it collects. So it emits this SF6 molecules outside.
They leak and this is the amount that equals to a couple of jumbo jets flying from Europe to the U.S. over the lifetime of one circuit breaker, it gives you that kind of emissions. So over the period of about 30 or 40 years, you're saving the emissions of about a few different jumbo jets crossing the Atlantic a few times. Terrific. So from these numbers, I think you will see that this is significant number. But you also see that that is not decisive. So we have other sources also of emissions.
I think we can discuss them also, like fire, power plants and many other things. Of course, they contribute much more than the leakage is coming from this equipment. Therefore, when we look into the footprint of, of our equipment, we should look a bit more holistically, because the big impact of our work on the CO2 is enabling the clean technologies.
It's not only the products themselves that are more sustainable, but they enable technologies, sources and consumption, which is much more environmental friendly. So let me actually ask you about that. With the sources that are more environmental, if we're to change the carbon footprint that the grid leaves behind, can that grid continue providing us with the same quality and quantity of electricity 24/7 and still be eco-friendly and sustainable?
That's our mission... Yeah. ...to make it possible. And so you've seen evidence so far that that is possible. That is already part of reality. And I give you a couple of numbers showing that if you look Europe; 44% of the energy produced last year, electrical energy was produced from renewable sources; 44% out of it, almost 30% coming from wind and solar. So it's not a theory anymore that this could be one way of getting the energy to the households. It's already reality.
And I'm sure you didn't have big problems last year with the shortages of electricity or with the interruptions, blackouts, etc. so the business was like normal. The life was pretty normal. While the transition from clean energy is already happening and this will increase.
And I was saying about motivation, what motivates me to come and work, this is one of those because the availability of the equipment that our R&D people are developing, our factories are producing, that enables that this shift from worst to better is happening without notice.
So do you ever find that you get frustrated with the speed of production in connection with speed of thought, essentially, so your team is able to figure out these ways of creating something that is more sustainable or eco-friendly, but production falls behind in some way? Well, first of all, we should be sure with the technologies that we're introducing. You mentioned reliability in the beginning. That is the key.
If we save somewhere, for example, the CO2 footprint but then someone causes the blackout for a few hours, I think we damage maybe even more than what we create. So everything in this industry where we are, everything that we introduce must be reliable. It must be fully understood, fully tested and then introduced. And this takes time. My wish would have been of course, to have these things every day faster, and we are reasonably fast actually.
But it's also needs time to ensure that the reliability is not compromised. This we cannot afford. No, I think that's important to hit upon, because I think so often we're anxious that things aren't moving fast enough to account for the changes in our environment that we feel are being caused by global warming in general. You know, that phrase is thrown around quite generally, and we want solutions immediately.
But I think what you're saying is important for our audience to hear, which is that they're very important safety protocol and checks that need to be in place to make sure that things don't sort of rush into production too quickly. Is that right? Absolutely. Yeah. So renewables are a big part of the way forward, I think it's safe to say. How is the industry in general adapting to those increasing demands for renewable energy sources? I think as an industry, we are living very exceptional times.
I think the scale of change is not happening very often. And there are three pillars of this change that we live today. One is what I mentioned, renewables and changing of the sources of the energy, of the generation of the electrical energy. You can imagine that in the past or also now to a good extent, we had a much simpler network, which means that there was one big plant producing the electricity - could be nuclear, could be coal-fired.
And then this electricity was distributed down to these bulbs that we have here. Right. Today, we have very many sources. We have wind, we have solar. Every house or every second house is producing electricity that is capable to feed into the network. And this system needs to be managed, and our equipment gets more complex to be able to manage this reliability of sources. On the other hand side, also the consumption changes. Before everything was also simple.
It's 50Hz, somehow electricity was generated in a plant and then it was turning the motors, pumps, the bulbs, they were heated up by this 50Hz current and then giving light. Today we have to charge our mobile phones; we have to charge our cars. Our houses are full of electronics. Those don't require, don't work with a 50Hz nice AC current and we need to convert this into direct current etc. which creates lots of variability in the network.
So the power quality needs to be controlled much more tight in a tight way because the sources changes, the consumption changes and this nice 50Hz shape is not there. So one of the purposes of our high voltage is to provide equipment that is able to monitor the quality of the power that we have in our grid and correct it, because if we don't correct it, then it causes problems.
So to give you an example of, how all this network complexity can have a specific impact on the equipment that are connected to the network. I have a friend who lives on a small island in Greece, and he often tells me that his fridge is out of order because it was damaged, and there was some flicker that he has seen more or less in the same evening. Well, what happens is that the power quality, this 50Hz is not 50Hz anymore and there are some spikes that are getting in the network.
There's sort of a surge of energy at one point, and that sort of, overwhelms the system of the fridge. Is that right? Exactly. That hits the fridge and the fridge is not designed for such a spike. And then it gets damaged. So I tell him, please buy our power quality equipment, for once instead of buying a new fridge every three years. Of course, this a joke because we don't make such equipment for household.
But you can imagine that when such a thing happened on the scale of a city where we use our equipment, or for a factory or for industrial factories, such, quality of the electricity can damage lots of equipment. And one of the purpose of us is to install monitoring of the quality or the frequency of the phase shift or harmonic content. So there are lots of technical terms behind that and correct it whenever it gets wrong and not acceptable.
Or rather strict laws that exist in every country and region how this power quality should be. So let me ask you a bit about that. On a larger scale, how does the aging infrastructure and equipment in cities or countries impact the reliability and performance of high voltage grids? You can imagine, an aluminum smelter, for example, which is fed from a transformer. And in between there is our switchgear, which is controlling the electricity that is supplied to this aluminum smelter.
And of course, they live long time, 30 years, but they need certain maintenance. They need also at some point replacement because nothing is forever. This is the switchgear that lives for 30 to 40 years, is that right? Exactly, and smelter hopefully lives for even longer.
So to stop this production for one day or you can imagine also a gas platform – to stop such a production for one day, it's a huge impact on society because of the availability of the production, but also a huge financial impact on the customer that is operating it and understanding when we should stop the equipment or when it's still okay to run it. It can save or bring very big benefit to the customers and to society. Right.
I think what you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong, is there's a lot of thought that goes into the negotiation of when to interrupt a system to enhance it or improve it, so that you're not causing too much upset to society or to business. Is that right? That's right. Well, I won’t say that it's not only the effect of replacing our piece of equipment, but the impact of the shutdown that you have to take is much higher costs on the society and on the industry, on business
even than the equipment itself. Right, right. Therefore, we have to be extremely careful and we have to know our equipment very well, the condition of it to be able to say, okay, now we have to stop. And up to this point it's okay to run it because it's in a good condition. And so on that note, when you are faced with that decision of interrupting the system or the machinery, how are regulatory changes impacting the development and operation of high voltage products?
Regulation, in particular the way that it goes last year, it's definitely an opportunity for us, for our industry, but also for our society. I think many movements, including also the offers or spread or introduction to the markets of SF6-free technology that I mentioned earlier are, in a good sense, also possible because our legislators, our governments and the society realize that we have to do something.
So we have to introduce certain limitations on emission, so on the energy sources, fossil fuel, etc.. So do you think it presents more obstacles or open opportunities for utilities? We as a technology leader in the field, we are in a very good position to innovate and the regulations, they help both society to get better, cleaner, to protect the earth but they also motivate the innovation.
Because some technologies have existed also some ten years ago, 20 years ago, not as advanced as now, but at that time have also seen that it was considered as a nice to have because we thought, okay, climate change is not real maybe. Some people at least thought at that time. And the governments, they are not saying that, look, everyone has to be better, has to be cleaner. So that was in my view, that was a bit breaking the innovation, which is the opposite now.
And we see that when the technologies are available, they get more mature. That is also impacting legislation because we should be careful making legislation which is not backed up by reality, by the technology. As of today, we have a very nice combination of available technologies and let's say ambitious legislation that motivates innovation and innovation is the place where our company and our high voltage units are good.
So it is definitely an opportunity both for us as industry, but also a company and for the society that makes our work meaningful. Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. So let me follow up on that. It seems that phasing out SF6 is proving to be the priority for the industry worldwide, not just for Hitachi Energy due to the environmental and health concerns. Do you think that the industry is ready to adopt SF6-free technology now? Do you feel like we're sort of halfway there?
Where are we in that timeline? We are in the beginning, but the direction is already given that the technologies are adopted, they are already commercial. First of all, they’re available, they are proven and they are commercial. We are expanding our portfolio and we see customers asking for it. So with the change, with the swap from SF6 to SF6-free, it will still take time. I mentioned you, the lifetime of the equipment is 30/40 years.
Whatever has been installed last year will still be there for a long time. This infrastructure, we cannot simply just replace because it's a very, it's a big, it’s a big thing. Do you feel that businesses or governments are on board to replace those, say, circuit breakers or whatever the equipment is that relies on SF6? Are they willing to replace it before its time is up? Like you said, that those pieces of equipment might last 30 or 40 years and were installed last year.
Do they want to ride that lifetime out, or are they willing to take the sort of financial hit of replacing it next year, or in five years.
If you would try to replace this huge infrastructure that has been built over decades, in my eyes, that would be a mistake because we would win on the equipment that we are replacing, and it might be also good for a company producing that equipment like we, but it would make more damage because we would break down the shift to the sustainable energy generation and distribution. There are lots of sources of energy generation that are being introduced.
If we keep ourselves busy with replacing the old ones, we’ll not make progress in replacing the fossil fuel based generation sources like the wind by the sources like the wind, it would be counter-productive to focus on replacing the existing one. Rather, we would anyway be busy, the governments and the industry like we by making new installations based on SF6-free. And this is also how the governments are thinking. Well, the legislation that we are seeing, they are addressing new installation.
While they always say that we can run everything that exists until the life end and there's also one aspect of it, our equipment, our heavy duty equipment, there's lots of energy that they transmit. And if we replace so much metal and insulator and everything, we might even harm the nature more by just scrapping the working equipment then helping with the SF6 reduction. Right.
It takes a certain amount of energy and causes a certain amount of harm to the planet to get rid of things and to dispose of equipment and various materials. Is that right? Definitely. Most environmental friendly way is for our industry, but also for our private life, is to use the things that we are having as long as possible. I think our cars for example; to replace a car every two years, even if it's very ecological one, it's not good for the ecology. The same for the switchgear.
I think replacing working things will not help us with the resources that are needed to produce them, and also with the CO2 footprint that we create by creating these heavy parts, they are not small bits and pieces that we are producing.
Yeah, I think that's actually a great example to give to our listeners, which is if you have a very fuel inefficient vehicle that you're driving and you want to replace it with maybe an electric vehicle, it could be that getting rid of your gas guzzling 4x4 or truck could be worse for the environment or something you have to negotiate in improving your emissions from your vehicle that you're driving. Is that right?
It's definitely worth to understand what is the pro and what is the con, how much will damage and how much will help. Of course, if one would have very heavy 4 x 4, which, four-liter consumption probably still, good option to go to more environmental friendly. But, there is certain balance with the many normal cars.
I think replacing one vehicle just to get the more electric one, for example, might not be the best option if you would look the full life cycle or the CO2 footprint that the whole chain of creating the car and using it makes. Right?
And also, I'm sure you're aware there's also the trend and social responsibility that people want to embrace and be seen as embracing, which is I want to be seen driving an electric car because I like the image of that, and I want to exude that personality that I'm responsible to nature. But like you said, we have to really look more closely at what that give and take is and what we're actually doing with those choices. Is that right? Exactly. Right. So let me pivot a bit here.
Does grid modernization and digitalization play a role in addressing the challenges that we've been talking about? Or rather, how does it play a role? Well, digitalization does have a special role in our industry, and it's special for the following reason. You imagine that the electricity turns lots of motors. I mentioned the aluminum smelter. It generates lots of heat to be able to melt down the material and get out of it aluminum. So it's, lots of real energy. Right.
This will never be digital, right. That's the physics. So our equipment will work with real power and they will be also heavy duty things because that is the nature. We cannot replace it by digital means. That is like that and that will stay like that. However adding digital to this main core function of our equipment can have a difference. And I mentioned you like stopping the factory and replacing the equipment. Right.
Digital means what we have now we are developing and we have them already in the fields. Allow us to put a sensor, a small sensor into our equipment and to monitor condition of it. Yeah. So without stopping the factory, the plant, without opening the device, without looking into it, we're able to get the information that we need. We create digital models that are taking the continuously measured data and define what is the lifetime of this equipment.
And this digital information can be also shown to the customer when it works out. And saying that, look, you have 5000 operations still this circuit breaker can do and can be in the field another three years. By doing this, we have a very big impact on the customer, positive impact because of all the consequences of stoppage that I mentioned. So digital in our industry is more enabling additional value, but it is not replacing the core function of our devices.
Right. So I feel like what I'm hearing and correct me if I'm wrong, is one very important part of a digital device like you mentioned, could be that you are able to keep the equipment running, but also monitor it at the same time without interrupting its function necessarily, which you may have to do without that digital component.
And so you're able to keep things running and keep track of it at the same time, so that you can study it and improve it while it's running, and have a more seamless replacement of some component. Is that right? That's a very good description. Actually, it's a seamless monitoring of the devices. And then using digital means to understand from the lots of data that we measure to understand what is the actual condition of the device and what we should do with that.
So before intervening with some heavy mechanical steps– Yeah, right. We can use digital to extend the lifetime of the device and thus to have the business of our customers, running as long without interruption as possible. And possibly in extending the life of that product, have less of a detrimental impact to sort of ecology of the planet. Is that right?
Absolutely. Yeah. Because of the thing that we just said, I think, replacing the equipment, hundreds of kilograms of material and scrapping that and replacing it, transporting it, producing it. So it has a long chain of things that impact the nature. So they have sustainability mark on it. Therefore, when we extend it from, say, 30 years to 40 years, we already saved one third more of the CO2 impact. Right. So there's a complex cost benefit analysis there.
Right. Yeah. Just to add to this, one insight is this and the other one is of course the reliability. When we monitor the device and we know how is its condition then we also ensure that it's working reliably. Whenever we see that, look now it's coming to the edge of the lifetime. Maybe it's not 30 years, it's worked 15 years, but in very hard conditions. Then we also come to a customer with a proposal that, look, now we want your network to be reliable.
And we think that next year you should plan in organized way a replacement or maintenance of the device. And you help with that, like you said, organized way of replacement. Is that right? Exactly. Yeah. The worst thing that can happen when this thing comes as a surprise. Yeah. Of course. You imagine a big city as a surprise that does not have electricity. So that's not something what we want. If the utility knows that in one year I have to do something, then he can plan it.
He can redirect the flow of electricity because it's a network, there is always a way. You can do it and then no one will see it. We as consumers will not see any difference because it's planned. So that's the ideal that there's something seamless about that transition, right? Yeah. So actually that's a great segue into the other question I was going to ask you, which is time is a luxury that this industry can't really afford anymore. And you've brought into our understanding of that.
A reliable grid is non-negotiable for most countries at this point. What would be your key advice for the industry to keep the grids working seamlessly without those dead patches of things not working to make the grid more reliable and available and sustainable? Well, we have to invest in the technologies. We have to invest to our people to have these bright brains, so that then they are able to come with new technologies and they're able to prove that these technologies are working.
Environment helps us because there is good regulation that also forces the industry to be reliable. Actually, it's not now industry. It's not easy to come out with a product which is not well tested, and we have to follow these things very strictly, and we have to be able to cope with the time pressure. We need the great people that are able to generate ideas, but that's not enough. They need to also prove the ideas.
And then we as an industry, as a company, we have to implement that in the production and make it available to our customers. At the end the people factor is a big game changer in the innovation, and particularly at the time of changes that are happening in the electrical networks and the power supply that we are experiencing now. Lovely. Thank you. Thanks so much. I really appreciate you joining us today Arthouros. Thank you very much Sam.
You’ve really deepened our understanding of energy, reliability and availability and the reduction of our carbon footprint in general. Thanks for tuning in to 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 script writing by Cassandra Inay. Guest speaker Dr. Arthouros Iordanidis. Hosted by Sam Dash. Produced and edited by Creative Chimps.