An Experimental Study of the Conduction Cooling System for the 600 kJ HTS SMES

The characteristic of the superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) system is more fast response, long life time, more economical, and environment-friendly than other uninterruptible power supply (UPS) using the battery. So, the SMES system can be used to develop methods for improving power quality where a short interruption of power could lead to a long and costly shutdown. Recently, cryogen free SMES is developed briskly based on BSCCO wire. We fabricated and tested the conduction cooling system for the 600 kJ class HTS SMES. The experiment was accomplished for simulation coils. The simulation coils were made of aluminum, and have inner and outer coil diameters of 460 mm and 728 mm and coil height of 237 mm. The mass of coil is 171.6 kg, it is equivalent to thermal mass of 600 kJ HTS SMES coil. The coil is cooled with two GM coolers through the copper conduction bar. In this paper, we report the test results of cool-down and heat loads characteristics of the simulation coils.