Recent progress of HTS cable project

Abstract

A lot of developments of HTS wires and their applications have been conducted since the discovery of HTS materials in the world. It has been recently reported that critical current of BSCCO wires improved to more than 200 A at 77 K and a large amount of wire was provided with high quality as industrial products. This improvement can be expected to accelerate the commercialization of HTS applications such as an HTS cable, HTS motor and so on. As the proofs of such trends, Sumitomo Electric constructed two HTS cable systems and started their operations in the USA and Korea last year. One of them is the HTS cable in Albany, NY, which has a capacity of 34.5 kV and 800 A and 350 m in length. It has been operated in a real grid without any trouble for 9 months. The other is the HTS cable in Korea, which has a capacity of 22.9 kV and 1250 A and 100 m in length. Its operation also started in the KEPCO testing yard last year. These results demonstrate reliance and stability of its operation. Recently, a new national project of an HTS cable has just started in Japan to demonstrate the operation in a real grid and study the system operations including a monitoring method, an alarm system, a maintenance method, etc. This paper reports the results of Albany and Korea projects and an outline of the new project.