Abstract
The main aim of the EU H2020 project EcoSwing was to demonstrate a technical readiness level of 6–7 for high-temperature superconducting (HTS) technology operating in a wind generator. To reach this goal, a full-scale synchronous HTS generator was successfully designed, built and field-tested in a 3.6 MW turbine. The generator has a rotor with 40 superconducting coils of 1.4 m long. The required >20 km of coated conductor was produced within the project’s time schedule. All coils were tested prior to assembly, with >90% of them behaving as expected. The technical readiness level of HTS coils was thus increased to level 7. Simultaneously, the maturing of cryogenic cooling technology over the last decade was illustrated by the several Gifford-McMahon cold-heads that were installed on-board the rotor and connected with the stationary compressors through a rotating coupling. The cryogenic system outperformed design expectations, enabling stable coil temperatures far below the design temperature of 30 K after only 14 d of cool-down. After ground-based testing at the IWES facility in Bremerhaven, Germany, the generator was installed on an existing turbine in Thyborøn, Denmark. Here, the generator reached the target power range and produced power for over 650 h of grid operation.
Highlights
This occurs at various currents and temperatures and will either stabilize over time or lead to a thermal runaway. Such thermal drifts have been reported earlier [24,25,26]. We investigated this behavior further and were able to describe it with a straightforward analytical model, which will be reported elsewhere
Further coil testing and acceptance protocols could be adapted it does stress the importance of an adequate thermal design in conduction-cooled high-temperature superconducting (HTS) applications: even with a starting temperature well below the critical temperature, inadequate cooling may eventually result in a quench
The production capability jumped from meters per week to kilometers per week. This was accompanied with a substantial upscale of HTS coil production; more than 40 poles were produced with a pole yield of >90%
Summary
Superconductors can carry high current densities, which results in power-dense low-weight coils with higher air-gap fields than in PM generators Both HTS materials and cryogenic cooling technology have matured greatly over the last decade, making HTS electrical machinery not just technically feasible and potentially economically competitive. The EU H2020 EcoSwing project designed, developed and manufactured a full-scale 3.6 MW DD HTS generator, installing and operating it in an existing turbine. This demonstrated an advance of the technical readiness level (TRL) from 4–5 to 6–7 and the possibility to reduce the generator weight by 40%.
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