Young-Jin Hwang

Experimental study of the effects of alternating fields on HTS coils according to the winding insulation conditions

This paper examines the effects of alternating fields on high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils according to the winding insulation condition. Alternating fields can occur in synchronous machines (armature reaction, faults) and other devices. In superconducting synchronous machines, alternating fields affect the operational characteristics of the machine and the superconducting field coil. Therefore, a method of reducing the effects of alternating fields is necessary in superconducting synchronous design. In this study, the effects of alternating fields on the HTS field coil according to the winding insulation condition were experimentally evaluated. The experimental results show that HTS coils made using the no-insulation technique can be a solution for reducing the effects of the alternating field. These results are expected to suggest useful data for applications of HTS field coils in superconducting synchronous machines.

Feasibility study for reduction of the screening current induced field in a 2G high temperature superconducting coil

This paper reports the effects of thermal energy on reducing the overshoot of the current sweep cycle method to reduce the screening current-induced field (SCF) in a 2G high temperature superconducting (HTS) coil. A disadvantage of the current sweep cycle method is the necessity for large overshoot in the coil current. For a 2G HTS coil, excessive overshooting of the coil current is undesirable (Yanagisawa et al 2012 AIP Conf. Proc. 1434 1373–8). In an effort to circumvent this overshooting problem, the thermal energy effect was investigated in combination with the current sweep cycle method based on experiments in this study. The experimental results show that greater SCF reduction in the HTS coil was obtained upon increasing thermal energy by heater current.

A feasibility study of full-bridge type superconducting fault current controller on electric machine power stability

Recently, because of the advent of Smart Grid and integration of distributed generations, electrical power grids are facing uncountable challenges. Increase of fault current is one of such serious challenges and there are some fault current limiters (FCLs) that can limit the fault current. Existing grid protection FCLs, however, simply limit the fault current passively and can allow the existing protection coordination schemes to fail. This phenomenon leads to catastrophic failure in the complex system and may cause unpredictable power grid operation. Unlike a FCL, a superconducting fault current controller (SFCC) employs a full-bridge thyristor rectifier, a high temperature superconducting (HTS) DC reactor, and an embedded control unit to maintain the fault current level at a proper value by adjusting the phase angle of thyristors. This paper contains experimental and numerical analysis to design and fabricate a SFCC system for protection and stability improvement in power grids. At first, fundamental characteristics of a SFCC system were introduced. System circuit diagram and operational principles were proposed. Secondly, the developed small-scale SFCC system was introduced and verified. A 40 Vrms/30 Arms class prototype SFCC employing HTS DC reactor was fabricated and short circuit tests that simulate various fault conditions were implemented to verify the control performance of the fault current. Finally, the practical feasibility of application of the SFCC system to the power system was studied. The problems caused by three-phase faults from the power grid were surveyed and transient stability analysis of the power system was conducted by simulations. From the experimental and simulation results, we can verify the feasibility of the SFCC in power system.