Design & development of a 15 kV, 20 kA HTS fault current limiter

A 15 kV class high temperature superconducting fault current limiter was de veloped as part of a Department of Energy Superconductivity Partnership Ini tiative (SPI) Phase II effort. This is an inductive/electronic fault curren t limiter (FCL) that can double as a fast sub-cycle solid state breaker. Th e said device was shipped to Southern California Edison (SCE) Center Substa tion at Norwalk, CA from General Atomics on June 15, 1999. Preliminary high voltage and high current testing was conducted. The pre-commercial FCL uni t houses three of the world's largest Bi-2223 coils (solenoids each with an outside diameter of 1 m and a coil length of 0.75 m), collaborated by GA a nd IGC. These coils will operate at 35 K and be able to carry a continuous DC current of 2000 A as well as an AC pulsed current of 9000 A. Detailed sp ecification of the FCL device and a brief description of;its various subsys tems will be given. Finally, test results at Center Substation will be summ arized and future work outlined. This Phase II FCL device is important as i t has the potential to become the first major commercial product for HTS po wer utility application.