At the end of the year, Siemens will put a high-voltage direct current transmission (HVDC) link in China that the company claims will be the world’s most powerful of its kind. It will be implemented with a transmission capacity of 5,000 MW and be able to cover a distance of more than 1,400 km.

The company will also be commissioning what it says is the world’s
highest-capacity 800-kilovolt HVDC transformer in China in mid-January
2010. This transformer is intended for the next, even larger HVDC
transmission system in China, which at 6400 MW will transport power
that is the equivalent to that supplied by 12 average-size coal-fired
power plants over a distance of 2,000 km.

High-capacity HVDC transmission systems like the one in China can
transport large volumes of environmentally-friendly electricity from
the desert to other locations.

“In the future, electricity highways will not only cross borders, they
will also connect entire continents with each other”, stated Udo
Niehage, CEO of the power transmission division in the Siemens Energy
sector. “We will only be able to counter climate change by making more
intensive use of energy-efficient technologies. We have to develop
renewable energies and convert our power supply systems into smart
grids so that we can manage the fluctuating amounts of electricity fed
into the grid intelligently.”

HVDC systems are an important element of a smart grid because of their
ability to control the amount of power to be transmitted.

The connection of offshore wind farms to the power supply grid,
high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems and solutions
for setting up smart grids are part of Siemens’ environmental
portfolio.