In the long run, elpipes are designed for continental scale underground transmission, in other words, as the main transmission technology of the the HVDC supergrid of the future. However, elpipes have introductory markets that are more immediate, such as undergrounding short segments of otherwise overhead HVDC power lines, for example as at the approach to an urban area along side a railroad track, or through a scenic area. Elpipes can have transmission capacity up to six times that of the highest capacity overhead line, which is about 6 times the maximum capacity of a terrestrial cable.
