Assessment of Eco-friendly Gases for Electrical Insulation to Replace the Most Potent Industrial Greenhouse Gas SF6

Gases for electrical insulation are essential for the operation of electric power equipment. This Review gives a brief history of gaseous insulation that involved the emergence of the most potent industrial greenhouse gas known today, namely sulfur hexafluoride. SF6 paved the way to space-saving equipment for the transmission and distribution of electrical energy. Its ever-rising usage in the electrical grid also played a decisive role in the continuous increase of atmospheric SF6 abundance over the last decades. This Review broadly covers the environmental concerns related to SF6 emissions and assesses the latest generation of eco-friendly replacement gases. They offer great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electrical equipment but at the same time involve technical trade-offs. The rumors of one or the other being superior seem premature, in particular because of the lack of dielectric, environmental, and chemical information for these relatively novel compounds and their dissociation products during operation.