Development of YBCO High-Tc Superconducting Power Cables
Shinichi Mukoyama *, Masashi Yagi *, Hirao Hirata *, Mitsuo Suzuki *,Shigeo Nagaya *2, Naoji Kashima *2, and Yuh Shiohara *3

The high-Tc superconducting cable (HTS cable) is expected to be brought topractical application in the future as a power cable because it cansimultaneously realize bulk power transmission, compactness, low loss and low cost. In
particular, the coated-conductor of YBCO tape is promising as a superconducting material of the
HTS cable thanks to a high critical current and a low cost. Furukawa Electric started developing
the YBCO HTS cable in the last NEDO project as Collaborative Research and Development ofFundamental Technologies for Superconductivity Applications under a commission of ISTEC.
We investigated the applicability of a coated-conductor to an HTS cable in the project, and weverified that a coated conductor has a good potential for HTS cables. Also, we studied about
important technologies related to AC loss reduction, a cable design and a cable joint, and we
fabricated and tested a 10 m-class HTS cable.

ABSTRACT1.

INTRODUCTION

Global warming is one of the most serious environmental
issues around the world. Huge ranges of the greenhousegas, such as CO2, have been emitted during the history ofhuman development. It is well known that the temperatureon the earth have been rising due to the greenhouse gas
and that, in particular, amount of the greenhouse gas
being emitted into the atmosphere is rapidly increasing
recently. If we leave the emission of the greenhouse gas
at the same level without taking any countermeasures, wewill have to face a critical situation in the future.
Superconductivity is a phenomenon where the resistance of some material becomes zero by cooling it to acryogenic temperature. The high-Tc superconductor thatwas found in 1986 obtains a character of superconductivity at the liquid nitrogen temperature of - 196°C, eventhough previous superconductive metals such as NbTi or
Nb3Sn need to be cooled down to the liquid helium temperature of -269°C. The refrigeration cost to cool HTS
devices will be much lower than that for metal superconductors. Therefore, the HTS materials are expected to be
applied for power devices such as a cable, transformer
and fault current limiter, because HTS power devices will
additionally bring benefits such as compact, light-weightand energy saving performances compared to conventional power devices using normal-conducting conductors.
* Environmental Technology Development Dept., Ecology &Energy Lab., R&D Div.
*2 Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc.
*3 Superconductivity Research Laboratory, International
Superconductivity Technology Center

The Furukawa Electric Group has been developing highvoltage technologies, low transmission loss technologies
and high reliability technologies of transmission lines thatare made of copper and aluminum to transmit energy
from a power plant to homes and offices, and we supply
these products to places all around the world. Furukawa
began developing HTS power cable as a next generation
power cable based on such technical background.
Particularly, an YBCO wire called a coated conductor or
2nd-generation HTS wire is expected to be applied for
power cables because it will achieve higher critical currents in high magnetic fields. Also, the price is expected
to be low comparable to that of a copper wire when thecost is calculated from wire cost divided by current capacity.
Our study of the technical applicability of YBCO wire to
HTS cables, AC loss reducing technology and cable joint,
which is an important basic technology, is described inthis paper.

2.

FUNDAMENTAL TECHNOLOGY TO
REDUCE AC LOSS OF THE CABLE

2.1 AC Loss Reducing Technology
When an AC current flows in a superconducting cable, an
AC loss is generated in the superconducting wire due tohysteresis behavior since magnetic fluxes try to move bytemporally-reversed magnetic field but are trapped by apinning force that binds the magnetic fluxes in the superconductor. Reducing the AC loss is important from an
economic viewpoint because the AC loss becomes theload on refrigerators that are used for cable cooling.
The YBCO wire with a coated conductor structure
applied for an HTS cable is shown in Figure 1. An inter-

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Development of YBCO High-Tc Superconducting Power Cables

mediate layer and a superconducting layer are formed ona substrate, and a silver layer is formed to protect thesuperconducting layer. In addition, a copper tape is laminated on the YBCO tape to prevent burnout from overcurrent. The conductor of an HTS power cable has astructure in which the HTS wires are wound spirally
around a former. In our studies, a large AC loss is generated at the perpendicular magnetic field on the edges of
the tape 1). See Figure 2(a). When an HTS power cable ismade with YBCO wires, how to decrease the perpendicular magnetic component applied to the HTS wire is the
key point for AC loss reduction. We have found that bywinding tapes with a width as narrow as possible aroundthe former with gaps as narrow as possible between thetapes, and by making its shape closer to a cylinder shape
as shown in Figure 2 (b), the perpendicular magnetic
component can be decreased 1).
Stabilizing layer (copper tape)developed as a measure to cut the HTS tape into a narrow width. The laser cutting is a method in which the concentrated high power laser light is directly irradiated on
the tape and a melted part of the tape is blown away bygas. Therefore, the laser can cut the tape with a minimum
decrease of critical current because the heat-affectedzone is small.
When we actually cut the wire once and measured thecritical current before and after cutting, degradation ratioof the critical current was found to be from 2 to 5 %. This
indicates that the heat-affected zone was limited.
Moreover, the laser cutting also can be applied to thecopper laminated YBCO wire because it can cut the
YBCO tape and the laminated copper tape simultaneously. All YBCO wires for the HTS cable in our R&D were narrowed by applying this method after combining the YBCO
tape and the copper tape.
Figure 3 shows the laser cutting machine and Figure 4
shows the 10 mm-wide tape divided into 5 pieces.

Protective layer (silver layer)
Superconducting layer
Intermediate layer
Substrate

Figure 3
Figure 1

Laser cutting machine for YBCO tape.

Structure of YBCO tape.

10 mm
2 mm

Figure 4

YBCO tape
Perpendicular magnetic
field component

Magnetic field lines(a) Wide tapeFigure 2

YBCO tape

Magnetic field lines(b) Narrow tape

YBCO tape winding form and magnetic field generation.

2.2 Cutting Technology of YBCO Wire
It has been discovered that reducing of AC loss can beachieved by making HTS layer close to a perfect circle
using narrow width tapes. A laser cutting method was

YBCO tape divided into 2 mm in width.

2.3 Cu Tape Laminating Technology
If a short circuit accident happens in the real network, afault current that has about ten times larger value than anoperation current flows in a power cable for a few seconds. An ordinary YBCO tape is consisted of a substratethat has high electrical resistance, an intermediate layerof an insulating material, a superconducting layer and asilver layer with thin thickness. If large current over thecritical current flows in the YBCO wire, the wire burns out
immediately. Copper tape is laminated on the YBCO tapeto prevent the burn-out of the tape as shown in Figure 1
and Figure 5. Figure 6 shows the equipment that solders
the copper tape of 50 μm to 100 μm in thickness and the
YBCO tape together. The equipment can laminate a 500
m-long wire with 200 m/hr of speed, by means of a
Pb-free environment-friendly process.

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Development of YBCO High-Tc Superconducting Power Cables

Copper tape

Solder layer

YBCO tapeFigure 5

Copper-composite YBCO tape of 2 mm in width(cross-section).

A 66/77-kV class power cable needs to withstand thefault current of 31.5 kA for 2 seconds. A copper stranded
2
conductor with a cross section of 200 mm was used to
the former to make large portion of the fault current flowin it. Cable temperature was designed to be suppressed
at 140 K immediately after the fault current flowing 2).
Table 1

Specifications of 66/77-kV YBCO high-Tc superconducting power cable.
Item

Structure

Former

18.3 mm

HTS conductor layer

3 layers
Tape width: 2 mm
82 tapes

21.1 mmElectrical Insulation layer

Liquid nitrogen impregnatedmultilayer paper insulation

35.5 mm

HTS shield layer

Single layer
Tape width: 2 mm
50 tapes36.2 mmProtection layer

Cu tape layer + Insulation tape layer

40.0 mm

Vacuum thermal insulation pipe
Thermal insulation pipe made of coaxial corrugatedpipe, and multilayer insulation

133 mmCopper tape
Take up

Drive /
length measurement

Solder bath

Figure 6

3.

YBCO tapeLaminating machine for copper-composite YBCO
tape.

66/77-KV CLASS TRIPLEX HTS POWER
CABLE

3.1 Cable Structure
The structure of a superconducting cable is such thatmultiple superconducting tapes are spirally wound on thecenter core called former, which is covered by an electric
insulation layer, and then by a superconducting shielding
layer and a protection layer which constitute a cable core,
and the three cores are accommodated in a thermal insulation pipe in which liquid nitrogen flows as shown in
Figure 7. Only one HTS cable is necessary to transmit
three-phase ac power. Liquid nitrogen flows in the gap
between cores and inside of the thermal insulation pipe.
Specifications of the 66/77-kV class triplex HTS cable aredescribed in Table 1. The cable can be installed in a common cable duct of 150 mm in diameter that is used in
metropolitan areas of Japan.

Cable core

Thermal insulation pipe

Outer Diameter

Copper stranded conductor
Section area : 200 mm2

3.2 Development of Cable JointHTS power cables will be used as an underground cablein urban areas. We need to develop cable joints that connect several hundred meter cables in a manhole because
there is a limitation in cable length due to the transportation to the site using trucks.
We need to avoid that the joint become the weak pointin current loading, voltage loading, liquid nitrogen circulation and mechanical property when a cable system withthe joints is operated. Therefore, we designed the whole
joint and the joint parts using development technologies
including low resistance joint method of the HTS tapes,
strong joint method of the formers, and no-leak joint
method of the thermal insulation pipes. The structure of
the joint is shown in Figure 8 and the joint that was fabricated is shown in Figure 9. As shown in Figure 10, two
HTS tapes were connected in such a way that a connecting HTS tape 10 mm in width was soldered on the copper
laminated layer of the two cable tapes to make a face-toface contact to reduce the joint resistance.

Protective layer
Superconductive shield layer

Thermal insulation outer pipe

Electric insulating layer

Connecting YBCO tapeSuperconductive layer

Thermal insulation inner pipe
Reinforcing insulation
Cable insulation layer

FormerFormerConductor layer (YBCO tape)

Former joint

Superconductive shielding layer (YBCO tape)Figure 8
Figure 7

66/77-kV high-Tc superconducting power cable (triplex type).

Schematic cross-section of normal joint for superconducting power cable. Cable cores for other twophases not shown.

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Development of YBCO High-Tc Superconducting Power Cables

Generated voltage（µV/cm）

2.0

66.0 K Ic=2365 A
67.5 K Ic=2177 A
70.0 K Ic=1875 A

1.5

77.3 K Ic=1130 A

1.0
0.5
0.0

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

DC current（A）

Figure 9

Normal joint for superconducting power cable.

Connecting YBCO tape
Stabilizing layer
Protective layer
Superconducting layer
Intermediate layer
Substrate

Transport loss（W/m at 50 Hz）

Figure 11 Measurement results of critical current (Ic) of 10-mlong YBCO superconductor.

8
6
4
2

0.01
8

4.

10-M HTS CABLE TESTS

4.1 AC Loss Measurement
A 10 m-long HTS cable was fabricated using the YBCO
tapes that are laminated with copper tape and cut into 5
pieces by laser, and the critical current and the AC loss
were measured. Chubu Electric Power Company had provided two 200-m YBCO tapes named IBAD-MOCVD
tapes. The tape was manufactured in such a way that a
GZO (Gd2Zr2O7) intermediate layer was formed on a hastelloy substrate tape by the IBAD (Ion Beam Assisted
Deposition) method, CeO2 was deposited by the PLD(Pulsed Laser Deposition) method to make an oxide cap
layer and a YBCO layer was formed by the MOCVD method 3). Specifications of the tape and the cable are shownin Table 2.
Critical current of the 10-m conductor was measured atvarious temperatures. The critical currents are shown in
Figure 11 as the V-I curves at different temperatures. AC
loss was measured at 68 K and was 0.090 W/m at 1 kA.
AC loss measurement results at different temperaturesare shown in Figure 12.

0.0904 W/m@1000A

6
4
4

Cable YBCO tapeFigure 10 Schematic of YBCO tape jointing for normal cable
joint.

77.3
77.3 KK
73.1
73.1 KK
68.8
68.8 KK

0.1

5

6

7

8

9

Current（Arms）

1000

Figure 12 Measurement results of AC loss of 10-m long YBCO
superconductor.

Table 2

Specifications of 10-m long YBCO superconductor.

Item

Specification

Former

Type: Cu stranded conductor
Cross section: 200 mm2Length10 m

YBCO tapeSupplier: Chubu Electric Power Company
Type: IBAD-MOCVD tape
Structure:
Substrate: Hasteroy 0.1mm/IBAD-GZO/PLD-CeO2
HTS layer: MOCVD-YBCO
Protect layer: Ag, 25 μm in thickness
Stabilizing layer: Cu, 0.1 mm in thickness
Length: 200 m x 2 tapes
Width of original tape: 10 mm
Critical current: Ic=100 A/cm

Structure of conductor

Tape width after dividing process: 2 mm
Tape number: 82
Layer number : 3
Outer diameter of conductor: φ21.1 mm

4.2 Fault Current Test
We demonstrated a 20 m-long HTS cable that was constructed with two 10-m HTS cables with a cable joint. One
cable was the 10-m cable mentioned previously and theother was fabricated by Sumitomo Electric Industry. We
measured the joint resistance in the cable joint and carried out an over current test in which a fault current of
31.5 kA flowed in the cable for 2 seconds, while the cable

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Development of YBCO High-Tc Superconducting Power Cables

was cooled with liquid nitrogen at 77.3 K. DC currents
and voltages were measured at voltage taps that were
provided 40 cm apart on the outer layer of the conductorin the joint. The voltage-current dependence is shown in
Figure 14. Joint resistance was 0.005 μΩ in linear voltage
rising area until 600A. The resistance went up graduallywith increasing current; however it was extremely low as
0.034 μΩ at a conductor current of 1.2 kA where the generated voltage in the conductor became 1 μV/cm, equivalent to the critical current.
Moreover, the 20-m HTS cable with a cable joint underwent a fault current test in which an over current of 31.5
kA flowed for 2 seconds-- nearly the same as for the fault
current in a real network of 66/77-kV transmission voltage--, and although the cable showed the maximum temperature rise of around 80 K almost as designed, virtuallyno damage such as a critical current decrease wasobserved. From these results, we confirm that YBCO HTS
cable would be used as a power cable instead of XLPE
cables in near future. From these results, we confirm that
YBCO HTS cable would be used as a power cable insteadof XLPE cables in near future.

5.

CONCLUSIONS

We have developed a superconducting cable where weused coated conductors of YBCO wires in order to meetthe requirement of low loss and low cost for a power
cable. In particular, we have been engaged in development of elemental technologies for AC loss reducing,countermeasure against fault current, cable joint designand so on, in addition to proving the possibility of YBCO
wires to be applied as an HTS power cable. We can havenew knowledge regarding the minimized AC loss of 0.09
W/m at 1 kA, stability against a fault current of 31.5 kA for
2 seconds and a cable joint for a 66/77-kV HTS cable withlow electrical resistance.
The development of superconducting cable technology
will continue toward the application of HTS power cables
to practical fields by further utilizing the superconducting
technologies, power cable technologies and material
technologies of Furukawa. We are going to take part in
the new NEDO project, in which the power application ofcoated conductors will be further studied, aiming todevelop 275-kV class ultra-high voltage HTS power cablesin the project 4).

6.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was carried out in the NEDO project as
Collaborative Research and Development of Fundamental
Technologies for Superconductivity Applications that
Furukawa had contract with ISTEC. The 20-m HTS cable
test was conducted in cooperation with Sumitomo ElectricIndustry. The authors also would like to express their gratitude to Prof. Amemiya of Kyoto University and Prof.
Ishiyama of Waseda University.

REFERENCES
Figure 13 Fault current test of 20-m long superconducting
power cable.

Generated voltage（µV）

120

Voltage tap distance: 40 cm

100
80
60

0.034 µΩ

1 µV/cm criterion

40
20
0

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Superconductivity, Volumes 445-448, 1 October 2006, pp. 515-520
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0.005 µΩ
0

200

400

600

800

1000 1200 1400 1600

Current（A）

Figure 14 Measurement results of resistance of normal joint.

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