Grid Efficiency: The Core Challenge

Executive Summary

The grid of the future will have higher efficiency due to increasing energy costs, public pressure, and policy directives that very likely will include a requirement to account for the cost of line losses in the line design. Steel cores meet this challenge head-on thanks to their excellent combination of low cost and high efficiency. Composite cores fill a niche where the premium for a composite core is outweighed by structure costs.

 

In this analysis, an ACSS conductor is shown to be 71.4% more efficient than the same-cost composite core conductor. An ACSS conductor with 1.4% greater efficiency than a composite core conductor is shown to cost 25% less. It is important that the policy makers and decision makers set rules that enable the selection of the most cost-effective and efficient conductor options. In most cases, the optimum conductor will have a steel core.