December 22, 2009 (HP26)  In December 2009, a team of several Russian Institutes finished acceptance test of the largest in Europe three-phase HTS power cable with rated power of 50 MVA at 20 kV.

The total length of the cable is 200m. The cable core is made of two layers of 1-G DI-BSCCO¹ HTS tapes from Sumitomo Electric Industry (Japan). The superconducting shield has one layer made of the same tapes.  High voltage insulation from cable paper was made at the Russian Kamkabel factory in city of Perm (~1500 km from Moscow).

The cable core was installed into flexible cryostats from Nexans (Germany) by the pulling through method.

During the acceptance test the DC critical currents were evaluated for each phase and they were not less than 5.2 kA at ~74K. High voltage with 50 kV DC was passed successfully. The cable was then connected to a reactive load and transmitted 50 MVA power at 20 kV during more than 24 hours without any problem.

The 200 m HTS power cable project is ongoing after the successful development and test of three phase 30 m HTS cable with same ratings: 20 kV and 50 MVA.  The tests of 30 m cable were performed from November 2008 until June 2009.  The results of 30 m cable project were reported at CEC-ICMC Conference in July 2009 in Tucson, AZ, USA and will be published in Advances in Cryogenics Engineering.  The paper was pre-published by ESNF, see Issue 9, paper ST117.

General management of 200 m cable project was performed by Moscow Krzhizhanovski Power Engineering Institute (ENIN). The three phase cable was developed and produced by the Russian Scientific R&D Cable Institute (VNIIKP).  Cable test was performed at the special test facility for superconducting power devices at the Russian R&D Center for Power Engineering in Moscow with participation of the Moscow Aviation Institute (Technical University).

After the successful acceptance test, the 200 m HTS power cable will be extensively tested at the test facility and subsequently, near the end of 2010, will be installed into the Moscow power grid.

¹DI-BSCCO is sort of a trademark of Sumitomo’s Bi-2223 tape wires.