Our key takeaways from CIRED 2025

Our team was in Geneva for our first time exhibiting at the CIRED conference, a must-attend event for leading experts in electricity distribution. Clean switchgear, distribution grid flexibility and a growing hype around medium-voltage direct current (MVDC): let’s take a closer look at what we learned from this edition about the key drivers and challenges facing the electricity distribution community.

MVDC is here! Our stand at CIRED 2025 © SuperGrid Institute

What is driving the electricity distribution ecosystem of tomorrow? Between their poster sessions and round table discussions at CIRED 2025, our experts found the time to talk to electricity distribution professionals and ask them about the key drivers in their sector for the upcoming years. Here’s what we learned…!

Distribution system operators (DSOs) are looking to comply with new market policies around clean switchgear which are coming into place in Europe by January 2028.

Two years ago, at CIRED 2023, several manufacturers announced alternative gas switchgear products. This year, the message was air insulation, at varying pressure levels depending on the manufacturer, used with increasingly higher voltages and currents. Laggards have had to catch up quickly, but most have now developed a range in primary or secondary air insulation.

The MVDC version of Schneider Electric’s SF6-free RMAirSet switchgear solicited a lot of curiosity from the OEM community. As a major innovation leader in the field of distribution, we expect other manufacturers to follow their lead, moving towards DC solutions to complement existing AC products.

With the shift towards renewable energy in a context where there are more and more demands on the grid, DSOs are looking to ensure greater flexibility margins to tackle congestion issues within their grids and increase their renewable power hosting capacity.

In this context, many DSOs are favourable towards the perspective of savvy prosumers (producer/consumers) operating their own MVDC systems “behind the meter”. By developing isolated MVDC systems which interconnect PV production, energy storage devices and DC loads, these prosumers will help alleviate the pressure on the distribution grid.

Over the last few years, the subject of DC has become increasingly present at CIRED. MVDC networks are attracting more and more interest too, with 13 articles presented at the conference this year, compared to almost none few years ago, notably from Korean actors and the French companies involved in the OPHELIA project. (see below).

In this context, our medium voltage DC technologies and grid studies solicited a lot of attention from the electricity distribution community throughout the conference! We were especially asked about:

• Our PV DC Solid-State Transformer (DC SST) for photovoltaic applications, made up of advanced technological bricks, which offers developers 99% efficiency for maximum energy delivery in a compact solution.
• Our AC/DC grid studies, where we help you find the best grid architecture for your projects, be it in AC, DC, high or medium voltage!

A new MVDC ecosystem is flourishing and SuperGrid Institute is at the heart of it!

The OPHELIA project, which we presented with Schneider Electric on behalf of the project’s consortium (CNR, Nexans, Schneider Electric, SNCF & SuperGrid Institute) at CIRED was a big talking point too.

France’s first MVDC PV collector network was of great interest for the distribution community who were keen to learn more about how MVDC technology is unlocking the full potential of linear solar power in this innovative project. There are few other demonstrators as advanced OPHELIA’s “ViaSolaire du Colombier” solar canopy.

The OPHELIA project model: an experimental linear photovoltaic park,
soon to be commissioned in France, based on an innovative MVDC architecture © SuperGrid Institute

It was a busy few days in Geneva at CIRED with plenty of rewarding exchanges and interesting takeaways. We’ve listened, identified the key driving factors for the electricity distribution industry, and are poised and ready to get to work on future MVDC projects with our new contacts!