Georgios Giovanakis about the advantages of powercore^®

The powercore^® Top Grades enable transformer producers to design their products complying to the requirements of the EU Ecodesign Tier 2 Directive and allow an effective reduction of worldwide energy losses. Is this a specific Euopean approach or are other areas developing similar regulations?

Ecodesign Tier 2 is currently the strongest regulation, defining clear objectives regarding minimum energy efficiency requirements. Other countries are following and will adopt soon similar regulations to protect environment and reduce CO₂ emissions. China has currently set up new thresholds. For the GOES manufacturers this will become a big challenge, as all have to convert their product portfolio to best in class Electrical Steel.

High performing GOES is crucial for a successful energy transition in the EU and globally.

The innovative powercore^® Rotate grades were developed, as the name suggests, for rotating applications such as highly efficient electric motors and generators in e.g. wind turbines. Where and why does specifically GOES create at are the advantages for your customers? when using grain oriented electrical steel compared to non grain oriented electrical steel?

Two different technologies are existing for rotating machines:

The first one, called "Radial flux", is the most common one and used largely worldwide. This technology induce a rotating magnetic flux, therefore NGO material is clearly the right one to use there. However, this technology is coming closer and closer to its limits and further significant improvement are hardly expected here. Only limited usage of GOES is suitable for improved performance but a specific design of the rotating machine (especially segmentation of the stator) is then mandatory.

The second technology, called "Axial flux", is known for several years but has been used only for limited purpose until now due to various technical constraints. In the recent years, interesting breakthrough have been performed with this technology and especially, usage of GO material has been proven to make it very efficient and reliable. Today, it appears that an axial flux motor made with GO material can have a power density 3 to 5 time higher that traditional motors and can lead to a vehicle range 15 % to 25 % greater. Several development are engaged with various automotive OEM's in this field and it seems that axial flux motors (with GO material) will be more and more used in the future for high performance requirement

Keywords "global markets, trade restricitions, Covid-19, Minimum Import Price": How do you assess the market and supply chains for your product, which is important for achieving European climate targets, in the current time?

All three GOES key markets are ruled by trade measures. But any kind of trade restriction is hindering the development of efficient markets. The current trade war between China and the US is influencing the market penetration in all other markets and puts huge price pressure into the less protected markets.

So far, COVID-19 had only limited impact in the supply chain to and for EU, however we recognize that EU transformer producer consider a higher share of localization. For us this is duty and opportunity