随着人们对环境与资源保护意识的增强，对生活方式的改善以及信息化社会的发展，对电力系统的经济性、供电可靠性、供电质量、供电容量和密度将提出更高的要求。对于这些要求，仅用常规技术是很难适应社会的进步对电力系统的需求的。在21世纪，迫切希望电力工业开展重大的技术革新，超导技术的应用，将是电力工业在21世纪的重要发展方向。文章系统地分析了未来电力工业所面临的困难和课题，论述了超导应用技术在未来电力系统中的地位，并简要地介绍了超导电力技术的发展现状。

In the new century, people will extensively concern themselves with environment protection and natural resource saving. Their life style will be changed rapidly. Information system will become the most important part of our society. All of these will put forward the following challenging requirements to the electric power system for high economic characteristics, high reliability, high quality, high quantity and high density of power supply. As the conventional technology used in current power system is difficult to meet these requirements, breakthroughs of revolution in electrical technology is in urgent need. Superconducting technology is one of those breakthroughs. It is commonly recognized that superconducting technology will be widely used in the electric power system in the 21st century. This paper systematically analyzes the problems facing the electrical power industry in the 21st century and the potential of using superconducting technology in the future power system. The current states of applying superconducting technology to the electric power system are also overviewed.