DEVELOPMENT OF A 10 M LONG SUPERCONDUCTING MULTISTRAND CONDUCTOR FOR POWER TRANSMISSION CABLES

A 10 m long HTS cable conductor was stranded with an industrial windin g process from 2 km of Ag/Bi2223 tapes. It was installed in a vacuum c ryostat and was force cooled by pressurized liquid nitrogen. DC- and A C-load tests were performed while varying the frequency and amplitude of the current. The critical current of the conductor is 5000 A. This model of a power transmission cable demonstrates very low AC losses of 0.8 W m(-1) at 2000 A(rms)/50 Hz measured both with an electric trans port and a calorimetric method, The AC losses vary linearly with frequ ency, P proportional to f, and have a current dependence slightly lowe r than P proportional to I-3. The magnitude of the losses is clearly l ower than predicted by the block model version of the Bean model. The model for uniform current distribution (UCD) improves the quantitative description of the losses. From these experiments we conclude that ou r low loss winding design of the conductor is an early stage of an eco nomical HTS power transmission cable.