Prototyping and Test of the “Canis” HTS Planar Coil Array for Stellarator Field Shaping

Thea Energy, Inc. is currently developing the “Eos” planar coil stellarator, the company’s first integrated fusion system capable of forming optimized stellarator magnetic fields without complex and costly modular coils. To demonstrate the field shaping capability required to enable Eos, Thea Energy designed, constructed, and tested the “Canis” 3 × 3 array of high-temperature superconductor (HTS) planar shaping coils after successfully demonstrating a single shaping coil prototype. Through the Canis 3 × 3 magnet array program, Thea Energy manufactured nine HTS shaping coils and developed the cryogenic test and measurement infrastructure necessary to validate the array’s performance. Thea Energy operated the array at 20 K, generating several stellarator-relevant magnetic field shapes and demonstrating closed-loop field control of the superconducting magnets to within 1% of predicted field, a margin of error acceptable for operation of an integrated stellarator. The Canis magnet array test campaign provides a proof of concept for HTS planar shaping coils as a viable approach to confining stellarator plasmas.