Tech Valley News
SuperPower Reaches Major Milestones
SuperPower, Inc. reported a number of milestone achievements and world record performances at the 2007 U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) Annual Peer Review in Superconductivity for Electric Systems in Arlington, Virginia. The company develops electric power components such as underground transmission and distribution cables, transformers, fault current limiters and motors and generators, utilizing state-of-the-art second generation high temperature superconducting (2G HTS) technology.
SuperPower says it has made significant progress toward commercializing its second-generation high-temperature superconducting wire for use by electric utilities, as well as other applications such as powerful magnets used in medical and scientific research.
Among the highlights:
- The company produced the world’s longest buffered wire in lengths greater than one kilometer.
- It manufactured and sold more than 16 kilometers of wire since July 2006.
- With its Albany HTS Cable Project partners, SuperPower commenced installation of the world’s first 2G HTS cable.
- With the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, the company set a new world record of 26.8 Tesla in a superconducting magnet.
- SuperPower was selected to receive 2007 R&D 100 Award with Partner, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
SuperPower also demonstrated the long-length, high-throughput capability of its pilot-scale wire manufacturing processes that brings the company another step closer to producing kilometer lengths of complete 2G HTS wire.
“The longer the piece can be without splicing, the better,” SuperPower spokeswoman Trudy Lehner told the Times Union. “That's an important advancement.”
The company's HTS wire is used to conduct electricity. When it is cooled to extremely low temperatures, the HTS wire has no resistance and is much more efficient and reliable than traditional copper wires. Typical transmission cables lose 7 percent to 10 percent of the electricity flowing through them.
“In addition to our achievements in wire performance and production lengths, further improvements in the areas of process speed, product throughput and materials cost reduction have enabled us to steadily reduce our pricing, with the goal of achieving price parity with copper by the end of this decade. We are well on the way toward achieving that goal,” said Philip J. Pellegrino, president of SuperPower, Inc.
Customers of its 2G HTS wire include 25 research organizations, universities and commercial firms from around the globe with applications including cable, fault current limiter, magnet and a wide variety of other devices.
SuperPower and project partner, Sumitomo Electric Industries reported the successful installation of the world’s first 2G HTS cable in the utility system at National Grid. This installation is the critical element in Phase II of the Albany HTS Cable Project.
Sumitomo fabricated the 30 meter long, 3-phase, fully shielded cable from the 9.7 kilometers of SuperPower 2G HTS Wire™ manufactured by SuperPower in Tech Valley and shipped to Osaka last December. This remains the world’s largest single delivery of 2G HTS wire to date.
Once installation of the 2G HTS cable has been completed, a period of testing will follow and re-energization of the system is planned for November 2007, with an operation period of approximately six months. During project Phase I the 350 meter system, that consisted of two 1G HTS cable sections, ran as expected and without incident for a total of 280 days (about 9 months) with no instances of the cable being taken out of service for any HTS cable system issues.
SuperPower has received $27 million from the U.S. DoE backing for the HTS demonstration project.
Once re-energized in November, that cable will be the first ever made of second-generation HTS wire to be used in the electrical grid.
SuperPower, in collaboration with the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) at Florida State University, has demonstrated a new world record of 26.8 Tesla for a field created by a superconducting magnet (including low-temperature superconductors). The HTS magnet coil, fabricated by SuperPower with SuperPower 2G HTS Wire™, and tested by NHMFL researchers, generated 26.8 Tesla in a background field of 19 Tesla at 4.2 Kelvin. Without background field, the coil generated a field of 9.5 Tesla at 4.2 Kelvin, which is a world record for an HTS coil. The new world-record field was more than 1.8 Tesla higher than the previous highest field of 25.0 Tesla that was achieved using a 1G coil in 2003.
“This test demonstrates what we had long hoped - that YBCO high-temperature superconductors being made now for electric utility applications also have great potential for high magnetic-field technology,” said David Larbalestier, director of the Applied Superconductivity Center and chief materials scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. “It seems likely that this conductor technology can be used to make all-superconducting magnets with fields that will soon exceed 30 Tesla. This far exceeds the 22 to 23 Tesla limit of all previous Niobium-based superconducting magnets.” Niobium is the material used to build most superconducting magnets.
A high-powered magnet – such as one demonstrated – could make huge advances in physics, biology and chemistry research.
“It is a real breakthrough," Larbalestier told the Times Union. “At this point in time, SuperPower is leading the world.”
Along with its Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) partner, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), SuperPower has been selected to receive the 2007 R&D 100 Award for its 2G HTS wire. The award was for a High Performance LMO-enabled, High Temperature Superconducting Wire, as one of the 100 most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace over the past year. This wire has the unique combination of strength, flexibility, fabricability, throughput, and low cost needed for power grid applications, including coils and motors.
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