SUPERCONDUCTORS
Experiencing the Power

The power grid of the future will be more efficient than the present one, thanks to high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wires and cables. HTS wires—being developed by ORNL researchers in collaboration with industrial partners to exploit a phenomenon discovered in 1986—offer much less resistance to the flow of electricity than do copper lines. Devices with such wires will take less space, cost less to operate, and use less energy than equivalent technologies. Superconducting cables in the U.S. power grid will conduct five times as much current as a copper cable of the same size. Because an HTS cable loses little energy as heat, it will cut electrical transmission losses in half, from 8% to 4%.

Using ORNL's rolling assisted, biaxially textured substrates (RABiTS™) technology, developed in 1995, American Superconductor has produced unprecedented 10-meter lengths of nickel-tungsten tapes on which a superconductive oxide and buffer layers have been deposited in alignment with the alloy texture. These tapes carry 100 amperes per centimeter of width, exceeding a Department of Energy goal for 2003. 3M and three other companies seek to commercialize the award-winning ORNL technology. RABiTS™ wires should be available commercially later in this decade for underground transmission cables, motors, transformers, and magnets.

ORNL researchers helped Southwire develop an HTS cable 30 meters long for the company's facility in Carrollton, Georgia. The cable—made of bismuth-strontium-calcium-copper oxide first-generation wires chilled by liquid nitrogen—has operated more than 16,000 hours. RABiTS™ wires will be used in second-generation Southwire cables.

ORNL researchers also have developed an innovative cryogenic system to chill HTS wires in a superconducting transformer built by Waukesha Electric Systems and IGC-Superpower. Waukesha's transformer, which uses no flammable oil as do conventional transformers, is to be laboratory tested in 2003.

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