AC losses of the 5 m BSCCO cables with shield

Abstract

In order to research the AC loss characteristics of a multi-layered conductor and a shield in a high temperature superconductor (HTS) cable, we prepared two short cable samples, which are the same as the 22.9kV/50MVA HTS-cable installed at Gochang test yard of Korea Electric Power Corporation, and attached voltage-leads to both the conductor and the shield. To investigate the effect of transport period on their AC losses, we also applied current with the same magnitude and opposite direction to the conductor and the shield from a few cycles to several minutes.The tests show that the AC loss measured from the lead attached to the shield (shield-lead) is constant regardless of transport period. But the measured loss from the lead attached to the conductor (conductor-lead) is greatly dependent on transport period. It seems to be caused by difficulty in heat transfer to the surrounding coolant due to thick insulator around the conductor. As transport period becomes longer, the conductor’s temperature rises and thus the AC loss measured from the conductor-lead increases. In addition, the measured loss from the conductor-lead is 1.5 times larger than that from the shield-lead, particularly for the transport period of a few cycles.