Transmission of Electrical Energy by Superconducting Cables

The growth of the world’s population, the general rise in the standard of living and the gap to be closed in this respect by the developing countries lead to a constant increase in the demand for power. Figure 1 shows the expected trend of the world’s power demand up to the year 2000 [1]. The present consumption of about 7.5 billion tons of hard-coal units (HCU) [1 t HCU = 8,120 kWh] will then have risen three-fold, i.e. to 22 billion tons HCU. While nuclear energy today represents a minute fraction compared with the other primary sources of energy such as coal, petroleum and natural gas, Fig. 1 shows an expected increase to about 35% at the turn of the century.