A Cable for Northeast Asian Super Grid
LS Cable and System announced on May 15 that the company completed the world’s first certification of a high voltage direct current (HVDC) cable. HVDC cable technology is owned by only five companies in the world -- LS Cable and System and four European and Japanese companies. But LS Cable and System became the first company to complete the certification of such a cable by an accredited organization in the world.
The HVDC method refers to converting a high voltage alternating current (HVAC) produced by a power plant into a high voltage direct current (HVDC) using a power converter, then transmitting the HVDC and reconverting the HVDC into an HVAC. Therefore, this technology is considered the core technology for building the envisioned Northeast Asian Super Grid that connects the power grids of South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan, and Russia. A super gird means an energy exchange network system through which two or more countries exchange energy as they are connected by a huge power network.
LS Cable and System completed a long-term reliability quality test (PQ) of 500kV (500,000V) DC cable under the presence of the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) for six months from October last year. As the institute has officially recognized its technology, it can export without any other test.
"Alternating current is easy to transmit over a long distance compared to direct current. So it has been a standard transmission method over the past 100 years," said a representative of LS Cable and System. “Recently, the development of power semiconductor technology has made power transformation easy. Therefore, DC is in the limelight as DC loses less power and overcomes limitations in transmitting distances and mixes well with a variety of renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind power, and fuel cells.”
The global market for the HVDC business is expected to grow rapidly, reaching 70 trillion won in 2020. In particular, HVDC will be actively used to connect entire power networks in a continent like Europe and long-distance transmission in large countries such as China, India and Brazil and projects to link new and renewable energy complexes such as offshore wind farms in Europe and solar power generation complexes in the Sahara Desert of Africa.
"LS Cable and System is the only Korean company that has the experience of having developed and installed HVDC cables," said Myung No-hyun, president of LS Cable and System. "We will actively participate in the Northeast Asia Super Grid project and work hard to make a foray into overseas markets such as Europe and the US.”
On the other hand, the Northeast Asia Super Grid project is expected to become more concrete as the South Korean government recently began to pursue a new northward policy and relationships between South and North Korea have been thawing fast. LS Cable and System explained that it was HVDC technology that could address problems stemming from differences between voltages, frequencies and the quality of electric power of South and North Korea.