Advances and prospects of HTS rotating machine development at Siemens

Siemens has a long tradition in developing superconducting technology, from the early 60s starting with Helium-cooled LTS magnets till today covering a wide range of potential applications. High temperature superconductors (HTS) can operate at much higher temperature (25-77 K), which has initiated world-wide activities for industrial applications to power engineering. At present superconducting rotating machines are in the focus enabling a wide spectrum of power varying from industrial drives of some MW to several hundreds of MVA for large generators and speed ranging from the slow motion of wind power generators or of high-torque ship drives to high-speed generators coupled to gas turbines. This work reports about the successful manufacturing and testing of the Siemens 400 kVA HTS motor, which has been in operation since 2.5 years. In the meantime a 4 MVA motor/generator is under manufacturing and technoeconomic studies have also shown interesting economical perspectives for large power plant generators.