Limiting Experiments With Coated Conductors

A superconducting fault current limiter could play a very important role in DC networks. The new electric energy landscape opens the way for new network diagrams with such DC buses. One key issue is that the whole superconductor participates to the limitation process in order to avoid destructive local hot spots. We propose to operate close to the critical temperature to benefit from higher quench homogeneity in the electric field development along the superconductor. We present limitation experiments in function of the temperature for two lengths (0.23 and 2 m) based on the IBAD-YSZ processing route with a stainless steel substrate and a gold shunt. The architecture of the conductor leads to shunt damages at the edges of the tape. Temperature sensors (resistive coating) have been deposited directly on sapphire wafers with YBCO in order to measure the temperatures. These sensors show a sufficient time response and sensitivity. The agreement is rather good with the simulations.