Innovative Calorimetric AC Loss Measurement of HTSC for Power Applications

The applications of high-temperature superconductors (HTS) in electric power components have been widely reported and various studies have been made to define their alternating current (AC) losses-a key design parameter for many practical high power electrical engineering applications. However, very few studies over the range 25 to 45 K have been conducted even though this is one of the favored temperature ranges for cost-effective applications of HTS. Methods and techniques used to characterize and measure these losses have been so far grouped into `electrical´ and `calorimetric´ approaches with external conditions set to resemble the application conditions. In this paper, we present an approach using the calorimetric method to accurately determine losses in the superimposed AC and DC fields likely to be experienced in practical devices such as Fault Current Limiters. This technique provides great simplification compared to pick-up coil and lock-in amplifier methods and is applied to a lower temperature range. The preliminary loss data at 40 K will be presented in applied AC magnetic fields with DC fields up to 1T. The data of losses obtained on this sample will allow the estimation and minimization of losses in practical high power HTS coils and will be used in the verification of numerical coil models.