Energy and the grid · Built and demonstrated
Wind generators
A 3.6 MW superconducting rotor ran on a Danish turbine for 650 hours.
The record behind wind generators
A superconducting rotor on a 3.6 MW turbine · EcoSwingSuperconductors in wind generators
Offshore turbine power is limited by what can be hung on top of a tower, and a conventional direct-drive generator for a large machine is a several-hundred-tonne ring of copper and permanent magnet. A superconducting rotor makes the same field in a fraction of the mass, and the saving propagates down through the tower, the foundation and the installation vessel. The demonstration on a real turbine is the evidence that matters here: it moved the idea out of the category of things that work on a bench.
What is stopping wind generators
A cryogenic rotating machine, on a tower, in the North Sea, serviced by boat. The field winding has to survive rotation, vibration and thermal cycling for twenty years with a cold head attached, and an industry whose economics depend on availability has very little appetite for a new failure mode at the top of an offshore tower.
What a better material would change for wind generators
This one is waiting on reliability rather than on performance. A winding that tolerated a warmer, simpler, more forgiving cold head would remove the failure mode the industry objects to, and the mass saving behind it has already been demonstrated on a turbine.
Conductors used in wind generators
Near wind generators, in energy and the grid
SuperMatics is a platform infrastructure company for superconducting devices: software that finds the material and the process, lab work that makes and measures it, and pilot manufacturing with industrial partners.If you are working on something in this field and a material is what stands in the way, tell us about it.