TEPCO Expects for Commercial Use of Bi HTS Cable in 2015

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) expects for commercial introduction of bismuth-based high temperature superconducting (HTS) power cable in 2015-2016. TEPCO will start one-year demonstration experiment during the second half of fiscal 2011 ending in March 2012 in cooperation with Sumitomo Electric Industries (SEI) and Mayekawa Mfg. They will improve functional and cost performances of the system with the experiment data.

Mr. Tsukushi Hara, director of TEPCO’s power engineering R&D center and project leader of the demonstration experiment, explained at a session to report HTS related development held in Tokyo on May 24.

The demonstration experiment is led by New Energy & Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) for the term of fiscal 2007-2012. In fiscal 2009, they finished test run of a 30-meter-long HTS cable for a month. In fiscal 2010, test operation of refrigeration system is scheduled at Mayekawa’s Moriya plant in Ibaraki, Japan.

Based on successful results of these test runs, construction of demonstrative HTS system will start inside TEPCO’s Asahi transformer station in Yokohama in the second half of fiscal 2010. The system will enter demonstrative operation in the second half of fiscal 2011. SEI supplies 66kV and 200,000kVA bismuth-based HTS cable of 200-300 meter length, which will be connected to TEPCO’s commercial power network.

Construction of a new pipeline tunnel is required when to lay new 275kV copper cables. By replacing copper cables with 66kV HTS cables, existent pipelines can be utilized because HTS cables carry very large currency even with compact sizes. Replacing demand is also expected for high current power cables used at power stations or aged POF/OF cables.