SMES system for study on utility and customer power applications

A grid model SMES system was developed for study on utility and customer power applications. The system consists of a 20 kJ NbTi magnet, a 15 kW 12-pulse IGBT current source converter and a DSP-based controller. To reduce the heat leakage, a couple of HTS current leads were designed and fabricated which are composed of Bi-2223 tapes and have a maximum operating current of 150 A. The 12-pulse current source topology was chosen for the converter not only owing to its low total harmonic distortion (THD) but also to its high capability of injecting capacitive reactive power into network. In the controller of the system two very fast DSPs (TMS320C32) are used to implement the control algorithms and perform the generation of the firing signals, giving a high accuracy and a high speed of response.