Fabrication and test of the model coil for a SMES

For the development of a small-sized superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) system we designed, fabricated and tested a model coil consisting of five coils with different features, e.g., winding tensions, bore diameters and materials, cooling channels. The results show that even in the highly prestressed small coil, about 70% of the coil´s critical current is degraded. The quench currents of the coils with narrow cooling channels are two times as high as that of the coil without spacers. The test results also indicate that the usual training effect depends on the winding tensions of the coils but the quench characteristic does not change according to materials of the bobbin.