New Japanese National Projects in HTS Applications

April 29, 2013 (HE69).  The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) contemplates two new national projects on applications of high temperature superconductivity (HTS) that may start in this fiscal year (April 2013 to March 2014).  The official announcement is expected soon.  The two new projects are:

• The program on HTS magnets for diverse applications.  Of these specifically mentioned are medical magnets for MRI and accelerators, magnets for train and large electric automotive vehicle motors, wind turbine electric power generators etc.  The budget for this fiscal year is to be about 9 million US dollars (assuming 1US$ = 100 Yen).  
• The program on HTS dc power cables, which is supposed to provide "An experimental proof of the HTS dc power transmission system".  The rationale for this program is to reduce the electric power consumption of Internet Data Centers (iDC).  A preliminary dc power supply experiment has been conducted by Sakura Internet during the past two years.  On that basis, Sakura believes the dc power supply can reduce power consumption and capital expenditures by about 20%.  The program should have two phases:

  i. Preliminary development and test of a 500-m-long high current, low-voltage superconducting dc cable,
  ii. Development and test of a 2-km-long dc cable.  An iDC should be connected with a substation via a 10 kV, 5 kA dc cable.
  This fiscal year budget is to be about 25 million US dollars.  At present time, the expected participants of the DC cable project are:

• Chiyoda Corporation
  http://www.chiyoda-corp.com/en/index.html

• Sumitomo Electric Corporation
  http://global-sei.com/

• Sakura Internet
  http://www.sakura.ad.jp/

• Chubu University,
  http://www.chubu.ac.jp/english/

Additional participants may still join this project. 

Both new national projects characterized above are supposed to run in addition to the still existing NEDO programs.  We hope to provide more confirming details on both new programs in the near future.