Real case study demonstrates efficiency improvements and 88% CO2 emissions reduction in high-speed railways, highlighting superconducting cable potential.
High-speed railways offer significant benefits such as high speed and large passenger capacity. However, their overall energy consumption continues to increase with network expansion. High-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables represent a promising solution to improve efficiency by reducing transmission losses in traction power supply systems. To date, HTS cables have not been deployed in AC-powered high-speed railway. To evaluate the feasibility, this article presents electromagnetic analysis and a real geographical case study on HTS cables to be equipped into the AC traction power system of the Shanghai-Suzhou-Huzhou high-speed railway. An HTS cable with the stacked structure was designed and optimized, and its fundamental electromagnetic behavior and loss characteristics were systematically investigated. Furthermore, a realistic case study was conducted to evaluate power losses and environmental impacts between the proposed HTS cables and conventional copper cables. Results show that the HTS cable efficiently reduced electrical losses, and also reduced CO₂ emissions by 88%. Both the microscopic analysis and macroscopic case study highlight the potential of HTS cables to reinforce the advantages of high-speed and low-emission operation for modern high-speed railways.
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Li et al. (2025) studied this question.
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