Impact of Long-Term Thermal Stresses of Electrical Equipment on Climate Change

The aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of long-term thermal stresses of electrical equipment on climate change. There were determined the steady-state overtemperatures and the thermal time constants for three different section size of a copper busbar system incorporated in a low voltage electric cabinet in order to compare the thermal stresses for each case. To see the influence of the long-term thermal stresses of electrical equipment over the climate change, it was performed an analysis in which electricity saved from reducing losses from Joule effect was converted into number of saved trees. This was achieved by equating the amount of electricity saved into emission in kg of CO2 saved, and respectively the equivalent number of trees saved depending on the amount of CO2 absorbed by them. For different scenarios, it was observed that the decrease of long-term thermal stresses of electrical equipment can result in benefits for limiting the climate change. Climate change awareness can lead us to solutions and adaptive measures to reduce the environmental impact of electrical equipment in order to follow a sustainable development. Key-Words: thermal stresses; copper bar; energy consumption; CO2 emission.