Progress in high temperature superconductor coated conductors and their applications

Abstract

Second generation (2G) high temperature superconductor (HTS) wires are based on a coated conductor technology. They follow on from a first generation (1G) HTS wire consisting of a composite multifilamentary wire architecture. During the last couple of years, rapid progress has been made in the development of 2G HTS wire, which is now displacing 1G HTS wire for most if not all applications. The engineering critical current density of these wires matches or exceeds that of 1G wire, and the mechanical properties are also superior. Scale-up of manufacturing is proceeding rapidly, with several companies already supplying the order of 10 km annually for test and demonstration. Coils of increasing sophistication are being demonstrated. One especially attractive application, that relies on the specific properties of 2G HTS wire, is fault current limitation. By incorporating a high resistivity stabilizer in the coated conductor, one can achieve high resistance in a quenched state during a fault event and at the same time provide significant heat capacity to limit the temperature rise. A test of a 2.25 MVA single phase system at 7.5 kV employing such wire by the Siemens/AMSC team has demonstrated all the key features required for a cost-effective commercial system. A novel approach to providing fault current limiting functionality in HTS cables has also been introduced.

Epitaxial YBa2Cu3O7−xnanocomposite thin films from colloidal solutions

“…Coated conductor (CC) development has been one of the topics where the novel advances in understanding nanocomposite film growth mechanisms have raised a huge interest [5][6][7][8][9]. While achieving epitaxial superconducting structures on top of buffered metallic substrates lead to the first boost in CC performance, a second major boost was obtained via the novel nanocomposite structure generated in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7 (YBCO) epitaxial thin films.…”

Single infrastructure utility provision to households: Technological feasibility study

“…Eventually, however, existing infrastructures will evolve into smart, hightemperature superconducting DC grids [36,37], supported by smart, large-scale A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t superconducting magnetic storage [38] to mitigate peak demands and smooth provision. The scale of these grids, however, will be minimised due to increased local, community and national-level generation, and the possibility of varying power transmission from the moon.…”

Status and Progress of a Fault Current Limiting HTS Cable to Be Installed in the Con Edison Grid

“…In this case, a conventional copper cable and reactor are placed in parallel with the HTS cable as shown in FIGURE 7. This conventional copper cable forms an inductive voltage divider with the source impedance and lowers the voltage seen by the HTS cable when it switches to its resistive, current limiting state [3]. During the course of the test program, there were some issues noted during the Basic Impulse Level testing that are currently being investigated prior to the start of the full cable construction.…”