The traditional colloquium on high-voltage and systems engineering, known as the "Darmstadt Circle" for short, was held for the 28th time from November 17-19, 2021. Around 20 doctoral students from the Technical Universities of Darmstadt, Dresden, Ilmenau, Munich and Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences met to discuss their current research work. For the first time, the event was held in hybrid form, as the lecturers from TU Ilmenau and one lecturer from TU Dresden were unable to attend in person. This year's colloquium was hosted and organized by the Technical University of Darmstadt.
The event began with two farewells to retired professors. Prof. Hinrichsen from TU Darmstadt was honored by Prof. Kindersberger from TU Munich for his life's work and retired. There was also a reminder of the best moments shared with Prof. Großmann from TU Dresden, who was bid farewell by Prof. Berger from Ilmenau and was delighted to receive the gift of training as an honorary locomotive driver for a small railroad.
The doctoral students then presented their projects in five lecture sessions. Interesting presentations were given in the fields of DC applications, insulating materials, switching devices, electrical energy systems and discharge developments, and some posters were also presented for discussion. Jun Ting Loh and Henry Hirte from the HSZG each gave a presentation on the status of their research.
In addition to the exchange of experiences, a tour of the laboratory and networking for new, potential collaborations, the highlight was an excursion to the GIL high-voltage hall in Griesheim. The gas-insulated DC cable route set up here, which is over 100 m long, is unique in the world and was built by TU Darmstadt and Siemens AG, including a test hall. Here, a cable route can be loaded with up to 5000 A and +- 500 kV on a realistic scale and tested with oscillating surge voltage. In order to feed the enormous power into the test cable, a system was specially developed for the separate introduction of high current and high voltage. This visit was culturally framed by a guided tour of Frankfurt's old town, which was faithfully rebuilt in the 2010s after being completely destroyed in the Second World War.
We would like to thank Prof. Hinrichsen and his team led by Julian Moxter and Manuel Philipp for the successful event and look forward to welcoming the participants to Zittau in summer 2022.