IRL team behind innovative HTS cable wins leading science award

Project Leader Nick Long accepts the Cooper Medal on behalf of the IRL Superconductor Roebel Cable team.

The Cooper Medal is awarded every two years to an individual or team that publishes the best single account of original research in physics or engineering.  Preference is given to research that contributes to the development of New Zealand natural resources or to an innovation with potentially substantial ongoing economic benefit to New Zealand.

The cabling research is now being developed towards commercialisation in a joint venture with a local subsidiary of General Cable Corporation.  The joint venture company, known as General Cable Superconductors, places New Zealand significantly ahead in the quest for a superconductor with the potential to carry high electrical currents and  lower energy losses. The cable will enable power transformers, generators and motors to be made smaller and lighter with up to 50% less power loss and lower maintenance.

The Chief Executive of IRL, Shaun Coffey says the cabling technology developed by the superconductor cable team has considerable economic potential for New Zealand in niche areas of the HTS^[?] market.

“The cabling technology developed at IRL opens up this emerging technology to a far wider range of applications.  While single wire is now being used by our associate company, HTS-110^[?] in magnets, generators and other devices operating on direct current, the cable extends HTS applications to more powerful devices operating on alternating current, including electricity transformers and large electric motors, providing the company with potentially a much wider range of product.”

“Proof of its potential is a contract IRL has signed with the multinational electronics and electrical engineering company, Siemens to supply HTS cable for a prototype generator for the electricity industry,” he says.
 
Aaron Gilmore, director of General Cable Superconductor Ltd agrees.  “This cable technology places New Zealand at the centre of a potential global cable market worth hundreds of millions per annum,” he says.

The cable technology used IRL’s expertise in the science of HTS coupled with the practical know-how of its engineers, who helped turn the scientific principle into a working cabling system. The technology involves cutting HTS tape into serpentine strands, which are wound on a constant plane and then encapsulated in a way that reduces electrical loss to produce what is known as HTS Roebel cable.

The paper that led to the IRL team’s win was presented  at the European Applied Superconductivity Conference in September 2007 and was subsequently published in the Journal of Physics Conference series.  It detailed three years of work from concept to the development of the manufacturing method, described the machines used to wind the cable and presented results to date on the current-carrying capacity of the cable and its low level of loss of energy.

“This cable technology has been recognised by the superconductor research community as a major step towards practical power devices, with real interest from major power system manufacturers. The investment from General Cable gives us the opportunity to make this an exciting manufacturing opportunity for New Zealand,” says the HTS cable project leader, Nick Long

The HTS cabling technology is the latest product of 20 years of research at IRL into high temperature superconductivity, much of it funded by Government through the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and the Marsden Fund administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand. 

The IRL Superconductor Roebel cable team consists of:
Nick Long (Project leader), Rod Badcock, Peter Beck, Marc Mulholland, Nigel Ross, Mike Staines, Henry Sun, James Hamilton, and Bob Buckley (Team leader).