Life cycle assessment-electricity supply using SF6 technology

Whereas there are known technical and economical advantages of using SF₆ technology in electricity supply systems, the potential environmental effects of applying this technology have not been quantified in detail up to now. From this background, a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) on the supply of electricity using different switchgear technology has been carried out, which showed the following main results: (1) already on the level of switchgear bays the use of SF ₆-technology results in improvement of most of the assessment criteria considered. For bays with a high loading and low SF₆ losses even the total contribution to global warming can be decreased compared to non-SF₆ systems; (2) for an electricity supply grid of a city with 130,000 inhabitants, the use of SF₆-technology showed to be favourable in all environmental aspects studied compared to conventional SF₆-free-technology; and (3) SF₆-technology provides particular flexibility in the basic design and in case of extension or re-arrangements of electricity supply grids associated with environmental advantages. The study has been performed and critically reviewed according to ISO 14040