Certain strong trends have been present during the whole period of electrifying. They are e.g. reduction of equipment size, improvement of its performance and grooving need for standardisation. Besides these demands, additional ones concerning sustainable development and ecological care have risen during the last decades. These demands are met by SEC in design and manufacture, and therefore even a single product can provide its contribution.

Sensors from an environmental point of view:

• Less use of raw materials. Sensors with small dimensions, as well as combined and integrated sensors leading to compact and uncomplicated cubicles, give savings in highly-valuable raw materials.

• Less copper inside cast resin. In Life Cycle Assessment, the use of copper does not automatically give a high environmental impact because copper can, in most cases, easily be recycled. However, casting copper into cast resin is negative because the recycling of copper is more difficult or impossible. The amount of copper in the single Rogowski coil of a current sensor is only a fraction of that used in a corresponding multi-core current transformer. The absence of iron cores makes the recycling of the primary winding possible. A voltage sensor does not contain copper windings at all!

• Small power consumption. The efficiency of a sensor is high compared with instrument transformers. In addition, there are no losses in the secondary cabling. These savings add up with a long lifespan of the equipment and at a utility level these savings could be significant.