General Competition (April 1992)

High-Temperature Superconducting Racetrack Magnets for Electric Motor Applications

Sponsor: American Superconductor Corporation

• Project Performance Period: 7/1/1992 - 6/30/1995
• Total project (est.): $4,462,704.00
• Requested ATP funds: $1,883,274.00

Modern electric motors, especially big ones, are already quite efficient. Motors above 125 horsepower have an average efficiency of about 94 percent. Nevertheless electric motors are a tempting target for the efficiencies promised by high-temperature superconductors (HTSCs), simply because they are ubiquitous. About 65 percent of all electricity consumption in the U.S goes to large electric motors, which therefore waste about 1.7 percent of the total electricity production in the country. A 1.5 percent improvement in efficiency for all such motors means an annual saving of 12,000,000 MWh of electricity, worth about $725 million annually to U.S. industry. The most significant energy losses in motors come from resistive heating in the windings, so superconducting motors with no electrical resistance could realize important efficiency gains. Building such a motor will require significant advances in the design, fabrication and winding of HTSC wires, especially in the complex oval-shaped geometries required by motor windings. ASC is pioneering an HTSC wire fabrication technique to produce flexible, durable wires. Working in cooperation with Reliance Electric Company, a major motor manufacturer, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which has an experimental HTSC motor project, ASC will fabricate and test a series of racetrack-shaped HTSC coils of the sort necessary for electric motors, study a variety of important mechanical and electrical properties affecting the performance of the coils, and ultimately build a 5 horsepower, 77 kelvin HTSC motor as a proof of the concept.

For project information:

Ann Lampert, (212) 532-6300

ATP Project Manager

Gerald Castellucci, (301) 975-2435
gerald.castellucci@nist.gov