Analysis of Wireless Power Transfer via High Temperature Superconductor Coils

Wireless power transfer (WPT) systems have become a commercial technology for applications such as recharging of low-power electronic consumer devices. This technique has potential for implementations where larger power transfers are required. For moderate distance applications, the most widely used method of WPT is inductive coupling. This article aims to harness the unique properties of YBa₂Cu₃O_7-x to improve the quality factor of a system of magnetically coupled resonant coils. This research focuses on the investigation of inductive coupling and electrical power transfer within a WPT system made up of a single pancake high-temperature superconductor (HTS) coil acting as the transmitter and a pancake copper coil acting as the receiver. Results show that the efficiency of the WPT system comprising the superconducting coil is up to a factor of 10 times higher than that of conventional magnetically coupled resistive coils in resonance. In addition, the trend of efficiency with coil distance is consistent with expectations. The performance of the entire system at various frequencies and distances is characterized via dedicated experiments.