Investigation on Effective Operational Temperature of HTS Cable System considering Critical Current and AC loss

Abstract

The operational cost for maintaining the superconductivity of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables needs to be reduced for feasible operation. It depends on factors such as AC loss and heat transfer from the outside. Effective operation requires design optimization and suitable operational conditions. Generally, it is known that critical currents increase and AC losses decrease as the operational temperature of liquid nitrogen (LN 2 ) is lowered. However, the cryo-cooler consumes more power to lower the temperature. To determine the effective operational temperature of the HTS cable while considering the critical current and AC loss, critical currents of the HTS cable conductor were measured under various temperature conditions using sub-cooled LN 2 by Stirling cryo-cooler. Next, AC losses were measured under the same conditions and their variations were analyzed. We used the results to select suitable operating conditions while considering the cryo-cooler’s power consumption. We then recommended the effective operating temperature for the HTS cable system installed in an actual power grid in KEPCO’s 154/22.9 kV transformer