This paper deals with contact currents that may occur when the human body is in contact with two electrodes at different electrical potentials, e.g., an electrical/electronic device and the floor. Actually, any device must comply not only with electromagnetic compatibility and safety requirements, but also with specific electromagnetic field exposure recommendations in order to prevent health hazards for the occupational and general public population. Since the contact currents depend on the applied voltage and on the human body impedance, this last parameter has been measured for several configurations in a broadband frequency range, from 40 Hz to 110 MHz. From the measurement results, a new equivalent circuit of the human body impedance is derived by using a vector-fitting procedure. This equivalent circuit is very easy and can be adopted for compliance tests against contact currents.

The paper reports the results of the test and modelling activities carried out on large commercial supercapacitor cells at high current. Four commercials cells, with rated capacitance of 3000 F and rated voltage of 2.7 V, are considered. All cells are submitted to consecutive charge/discharge cycles at constant current. A test current in the range 80–130 A is used, which is comparable with the maximum operating current (up to 150 A) that the cells can reach in practical operations. A circuit model of the cells, able to reproduce the most relevant dynamic behavior, with a good compromise between accuracy, simplicity and robustness of the model’s parameters, is also developed and validated against the experimental data. It is shown that all the investigated commercial cells are characterized by similar phenomena and comply with the same circuit model. Moreover, it is shown that the circuit parameters of the cells are in the same range and are weakly dependent on the test current. The obtained circuit parameters are accurately reported for all the cells and made fully accessible to users.

EU-DEMO is a European project, having the ambitious goal to be the first demonstrative power plant based on nuclear fusion. The electrical power that is expected to be produced is in the order of 700–800 MW, to be delivered via a connection to the European High Voltage electrical grid. The initiation and control of fusion processes, besides the problems related to the nuclear physics, need very complex electrical systems. Moreover, also the conversion of the output power is not trivial, especially because of the inherent discontinuity in the EU-DEMO operations. The present article concerns preliminary studies for the feasibility and realization of the nuclear fusion power plant EU-DEMO, with a special focus on the power electrical systems. In particular, the first stage of the study deals with the survey and analysis of the electrical loads, starting from the steady-state loads. Their impact is so relevant that could jeopardy the efficiency and the convenience of the plant itself. Afterwards, the loads are inserted into a preliminary internal distribution grid, sizing the main electrical components to carry out the power flow analysis, which is based on simulation models implemented in the DIgSILENT PowerFactory software.