Test results of a 30 m high-Tc superconducting power cable

Furukawa Electric is developing technologies for reducing the AC losses in and cooling HTS cables as part of the Super-ACE project. These technologies are important to facilitate the introduction of HTS cable into the electric power network. Furukawa executes research on these topics under the support of Chubu Electric Power Company, Tokyo Electric Power Company and Kansai Electric Power Company. We report on the progress of technology development for cooling long scale superconducting cables. The HTS cable is designed as a single core, 77 kV cable with cryogenic dielectric. A 30 m long cable was manufactured and tested to obtain design data for the 500 m long cable that will be tested in CRIEPI in 2004. The cable manufactured here used transposition tape twisted by six tapes of Bi2223. In the 30 m-cable tests, the influence of thermal contraction on critical current and heat invasion was examined. The tests confirmed that our cable can withstand thermal contraction. Moreover, useful data for cable design such as pressure drop and thermal contraction stress were obtained. We started manufacturing and preparing for substantive tests of 500 m-cable based on the success of these tests.