Progress in manufacturing of HTS power transmission cable

In order to cover the numerous HTSC cable laminated designs that consist of a reinforcement of the projects that Pirelli Cavi e Sistemi has undertaken with different US and European utilities, a dedicated production facility has been established. This facility is exclusively dedicated to the development and the manufacturing of high temperature superconducting (HTS) power cables. Its production capability, estimated in 12 km/year, is presently oversized. To date, almost 1500 m of both dummy (copper) and real (HTS) conductors have been produced, using about 35 km of HTS Ag/BSCCO tapes (for the “real” conductors). HTS tapes, supplied by American Superconductor, termed “laminated wires” have very good mechanical properties due to the use of thin strips of stainless steel in a sandwich configuration. This paper reports the results of different cable manufacturing and cable trials. The success of this program represents the basis of the reliability demonstration of HTS cable manufacturing. The paper also presents the comparison between the theoretical and the experimental results relevant to the degradation of the tape electrical properties due to mechanical stresses experienced by the cable from manufacturing up to cool-down