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HTS Roebel cable
HTS[?] cabling technology is the latest product of 19 years of research at IRL into high temperature superconductors, 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.
An HTS[?] Roebel cable being wound.
Superconductors are materials which carry electrical currents with effectively zero resistance at low temperatures. Recent IRL research has focused on the application of HTS technology in devices such as magnets, motors and generators.
In finding a process whereby HTS wire can be efficiently and cost-effectively formed into a cable, the IRL researchers have opened the way for much broader uptake of the technology with its potential to carry high electrical currents with lower losses of energy.
The cable will be useful in very high current rated devices such as large generators, transformers and motors and also in devices operating with AC current such as some magnets and induction heaters.
The challenge with the technology has always been that many applications require not just the currently used single wire, but a collection of wires or cabling which will operate not only with AC power (the type of electricity most of the world uses domestically and in industry) but also with large DC currents.
IRL’s high temperature superconducting team has come up with a process to turn fragile HTS wire into robust cable and open the way for the wider application of HTS technology in industry. The technology around the new cable involves cutting HTS tape in ribbon form to be stacked, cabled and encapsulated in a way that reduces electrical loss, thus producing a low-AC–loss HTS cable.
HTS technology has distinct advantages over conventional conducting materials in that it is vastly more energy efficient and equipment using the technology can be made smaller and lighter, with up to 50 per cent less electricity loss and lower maintenance requirements. The cable developed by IRL is designed for applications at liquid nitrogen temperature (-196°C or 77K) and below.