Recent Progress of Liquid Nitrogen Cooling System (LINCS) for Yokohama HTS Cable Project

AbstractAdopting a high temperature superconducting cable system into the power grid has been studied and demonstrated around the globe because of its inherent high potential for such high transmission capacity, low electrical loss, environment friendly operation and so on. Taking their benefits for the innovative power transmission system into consideration, a new Japanese HTS cable project has begun since 2007, which is supported by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and is verifying practical use of the system in the real grid. For investigating this study, a practical use of the HTS cablesystem composed of cable, joint and termination, operating stability and long term reliability of its liquid nitrogen cooling system is one of the essential engineering to be studied and confirmed for the next real in grid system in this project. In this paper, project outline, fundamental characteristics of the cable system, conceptual design of the cooling system for the demonstration project are introduced. And some test results of them, including a cooling system pre-test in Mayekawa factory prior to final operation in Yokohama test site are presented. This pre-test was conducted with the aim of confirming their required basic performance, liquid nitrogen control characteristics and so on. Finally the current status of Yokohama testing site will be also described in this paper