Secure super grids™: A new solution for secure power in critical urban centers

A key requirement for rapid economic growth is a reliable and sustainable electric power infrastructure. Such infrastructure must be built quickly and with a capacity that can allow for sustained growth and high reliability over its lifetime. A major focus of such growth is in large, densely populated urban areas that are traditionally host to critical centers of finance, trade and government, where significant disruptions to the electric power grid can severely impact the regional and national economy and security. State-of-the-art electric power technologies insure a highly scalable infrastructure on a par with the best in the world today. Much as transportation infrastructure has been revolutionized by multi-laned highways and communications infrastructure networks, a next generation electricity network is possible today with the introduction of key new technologies. This paper describes the impact of deploying one such technology: a high temperature superconductor (HTS) electric cable system with a built-in fault current limiting feature, which can provide a major enhancement in power capacity and fault current protection while adding to the security and reliability of the electric power grid. American superconductor's (AMSCtrade) secure super gridstrade technology builds on HTS cable demonstrations around the world over the last ten years. The first Secure Super Grids demonstration project is ongoing in the United States under a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, led by AMSC in collaboration with Consolidated Edison (Con Edison) of New York City.