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Many grids are
struggling with
modern power
sources and
demands. With
ESRF imagery,
ENODA scientists
are honing a solution.
Once it was all so simple: big,
centralised power plants, one-way
current and a host of passive, mostly
similar consumers. Now power comes
from a mix of offshore wind farms
and urban rooftop solar panels, while
local demand surges every evening as
commuters return home and plug in
their electric vehicles. The old grid
infrastructure is struggling to keep
up – especially traditional power
transformers, which were only ever
designed to work with unidirectional
power flow.
ENODA, an energy technology
company based in Edinburgh, UK,
is developing new types of devices to
replace transformers. One of those
technologies, Prime Exchangers, are
able to actively balance voltages and
other electrical characteristics when
– as is increasingly the case – there
are disparities in local demand and
supply. Built around a novel three-
phase electromagnetic core, they sense
issues such as voltage imbalances or
harmonic distortions, and respond in
real time. Using embedded electronics
and control software, they shape the
current as it passes through helping
to stabilise the grid rather than simply
stepping voltage up or down
Like electric drives and
transformers ENODAs exchangers
require copper coils to be integrated
within a material that can maintain
electrical insulation at high voltages
and temperatures ideally with
lifespans of 20 to 40 years Here the
devil is in the detailmicrosized voids
or cracks inadvertently created during
manufacture can during operation
be the source of catastrophic electrical
arcs. Homogeneity is the key.
Since microstructures can often
be buried within the material, and
therefore invisible from the outside,
a team led by Peter Hutchins from
ENODA took samples to the
ESRF’s ID19 beamline, where they
could be imaged internally, non-
destructively, by X-ray phase-contrast
tomography. “I have a longstanding
collaborative relationship with [ID19
scientist] Alexander Rack – he’s
one of the top people in the world
for dynamic imaging with X-rays,”
says Hutchins. “His beamline is
particularly interesting, because of its
high flux, high spatial resolution and
phase-contrast.”
Testing production
Hutchins and his colleagues use a
manufacturing technique based
on vacuum and pressure casting to
make composite insulators composed
of nano and microparticles in a
polymer matrix The samples they were
investigating had slightly different
compositions and advanced fabrication
protocols involving robotics and high
throughputs The ID19 data could
help them define the validity of specific
combinations of these parameters
Based on this validation we can now
Stabilising the grid
December 2025 ESRFnews
P E T E R H U T C H I N S
State-of-the-art
composite insulator
ready for imaging at
the ID19 beamline.
scale production to high throughput,”
says Hutchins.
That will be good news for the
redevelopment of grid infrastructure.
A number of widespread power
failures of modern times – such as the
blackout in April this year over the
Iberian Peninsula in Portugal and
Spain – have been due in large part to
legacy transformers unable to balance
loads dynamically. The Exchanger
developed by ENODA is designed
to mitigate these incidents, as well
as prepare grids for the increasingly
irregular and distributed networks of
renewables and rapidly evolving loads,
including electric vehicle charging.
Hutchins expects that ENODA’s
technology will benefit from more
visits to the ESRF Although in his
teams latest experiment they changed
samples by hand he is expecting to
turn to automated sample changing
in future experiments to help
with computer modelling rapid
prototyping the development of
novel materials and the generation of
artificialintelligence training data
Being a rapidly scaling company we
dont have a lot of time he says We
want to see results fast
Jon Cartwright