Thermal Characteristics of 10kA Class HTS DC Power Cable Under Over-current Conditions

Abstract

Electrical energy is in great demand with the development of economy, traditional power transmission can no longer provide enough capacity for the need. HTS power cable could be the most suitable way to achieve large capacity and long distance power transmission. Over the decades, many domestic and foreign superconducting cable projects have been put into operation. From the development of LIPA project and the trend around world, we can see that YBCO HTS power cables especially YBCO DC HTS ones are the main subjects to be investigated. In 2012, A 360m/10kA HTS DC power cable system used to supply power to an electrolytic aluminum industry was built in Henan China. In this paper, based on 10kA HTS DC power cable project, we replace Bi series tapes as YBCO conductors to investigate the thermal stability, which can provide support for building HTS cables with YBCO coated conductors rated at 10kA. We did research on the temperature distribution working at 10kA, as well as over-current situations. Also, we studied the effect of convective coefficient on the temperature rise.