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World first as wind turbine upgraded with high temperature superconductor
- _Microft 8y agoSlightly OT, regarding high-temperature superconductivity: this article [1] reports on an interesting effect that appears in some materials that are showing HTS. A theoretical scientist is quoted there with “We probably won’t understand why the superconducting temperature in cuprates is high until we understand the strange-metal phase out of which the superconductivity emerges”. A new approach seems welcome, as it felt like progress on HTS had stalled (imo). It might finally help us to get closer to room temperature superconductors... :) [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/universal-quantum-phenomenon-found-in-superconductors-20181119/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/universal-quantum-phenomenon-...
- politician 8y agoYou might find the recent work on graphene superlattices [1] interesting; the video goes into a bit into what cuprates are doing and how the graphene approach might explain some of that space. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18514085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18514085
- 2sk21 8y agoIts taken 30 years for high-temperature superconductivity to have a significant impact in the real world!
- village-idiot 8y agoSo? It’s here now.
- jacquesm 8y agoHTS for windmill park power stabilization purposes is at least a decade old.
- njarboe 8y agoMany technologies don't commercially take off until the large number of early patents expire after 20 or so years.
- sien 8y agoFabricating them has proven to be very challenging. A bit like with solar cells with high efficiency. Labs create them, but fabricating it in useful volumes is also hugely challenging. Or, if you like, GUIs, which were demonstrated in 1967 but didn't come into great use until about 20 years later.
- ngcc_hk 8y ago“They require substantial quantities of rare earth metals, however, which are expensive and are mostly mined in just one country – China – which has led to worries over security of supply.“
- lacksconfidence 8y agoTo be clear this quote refers to the traditionally used magnets.
- whatshisface 8y agoThere are other potential sources in the world, but they will not be explored until there is a clear financial benefit to exploring them. That will most likely not happen until something goes wrong with the supply in China.
- RidingPegasus 8y agoChina only has 1/3rd of the worlds extractable deposits. Rare earth minerals is the typical "China Bad" scare story. They reduced the amount they sold because they wanted it themselves to value-add making electronics/renewables and being the vast majority of world supply it got them a better price. Much like many other countries on earth do. OPEC even has multiple annual meetings where they all decide to collude on restricting oil supply. If the rest of the world was truly worried they'd subsidise the industry, as it stands most countries throw away all their rare earths in tailing dams as mining byproduct because it's not worthwhile to extract it.
- strainer 8y agoIn contrast to the common expectation and statements in this article - most turbines are already not using the rare earth magnet design. Study: Substitution strategies for reducing the use of rare earths in wind turbines [1] >According to our estimations about 23% of the global installed capacity in 2015 is based on wind turbines using [permanent magnet] technology. The remaining 77% are using conventional electromagnets generators based on magnetic steel and copper windings, both of them posing no issues about the security of material supply. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420717300077 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142071...
- crb002 8y agoYou could probably pack an array of several smaller diameter dynamos within the housing of the base. Only issue is the belt/chain drive down the shaft so if one jams the others can still work.
- stephen_g 8y agoI don't think the size of the thing is really an issue - they can always make bigger turbines. Smaller and lighter for the same power is definitely a plus, but not the big advantage the article is talking about. The real advantage of this is not having to use a tonne of rare-earth magnet and instead using only kilograms of rare earth material in the superconducting version.
- xbmcuser 8y agoThe lighter the material the larger they can make using less materials. On site installation and other related things also become easier.
- amaterasu 8y agoWould be interesting to see the actual cost differential in this vs permanent magnets. They don't go into details about the cost of fabricating the HTS, but gadolinium is less than half the cost (in oxide form) of neodymium according to the article, and it uses 1/1000th the amount.
- tigershark 8y agoI think it’s just a publicity stunt. There is no way that this wind turbine will be more profitable than a normal one given the pretty crazy cooling requirements. Also I don’t really understand why they chose that kind of superconductor that apparently has to be cooled to -240 when there are other superconductors that need to be cooled to just 150K...
- dagw 8y agohere are other superconductors that need to be cooled to just 150K Don't those very high temperature super conductors only work under under extremely high pressure? Also most higher temperature super conductors are very tricky to produce in larger quantities.
- tigershark 8y agoHonestly I don’t know about the 150K one, but if I remember correctly the cuprates didn’t need high pressures.
- londons_explore 8y agoThe ceramic ones aren't flexible, which is tricky when you're using it like a wire and need to wrap it around stuff... Also, they can't be joined, so you have to do significant redesigns of the machine to be able to get the whole conductor in in one piece.
- tigershark 8y agoIt makes sense, thanks, I didn’t think about flexibility.
- analog31 8y agoDoes the refrigerator still need helium? Getting rid of helium might be a bigger deal than just raising the temperature. Edit: Thanks for the comments. Adding a note: As I understand it, in some of these materials, the transition temperature decreases when the material is in a strong magnetic field, so there's a limit to how strong a magnet can be made, and further cooling may be needed to deliver sufficient field for an application. Still, I'm excited, and hoping that the "grail" of helium free refrigeration is achieved soon, due to the tricky issue of world helium supply.
- azernik 8y agoGenerally "high-temperature" means liquid-nitrogen temperatures - in general, 77K is a common lab benchmark for these materials. EDIT: See, for example, this paper on the superconductor in question, which gives properties at 77K and zero magnetic field: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921453497001202 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09214...
- Dylan16807 8y agoThey're cooling it to about 30K, at which point nitrogen is frozen solid.
- azernik 8y agoInteresting. That's around the liquid hydrogen range - still cheaper than helium, but probably not as easy to work with as nitrogen. I guess their requirements for critical field were high enough that the 77K GdBaCuO performance wasn't good enough?
- Dylan16807 8y agoGoing by the link stephen_g found, it has around 1.8x the needed capacity at 30K, 1x at 50K, and 0.2x at 77K.
- ginko 8y ago
- amluto 8y agoI'd be interested in a comparison of the cost and efficiency of this type of generator versus using an induction generator. Induction generators don't need magnets either. I'm also wondering what type of generator they built. Is the superconductor in the rotor or the stator? Does it carry a DC current and, if so, is it operated in persistent mode? Or does it carry an AC current like an induction generator's rotor would?
- tgtweak 8y agoIt would seems like the superconductor works on stator and rotor like an induction generator. Edit: looks like it's just the rotor: Some quotes from the test: "The EcoSwing rotor is made up of two parts which are thermally decoupled by a vacuum chamber. The part responsible for the bearing and the mechanical connection of the generator rotor is operated at ambient temperatures; the electromagnetic part of the generator rotor is designed to operate at cryogenic temperatures. This places particular requirements on the test bench: The generator has to be cooled down to 30 K (that is about -240 °C) using a closed-cycle gas cooling. While this was the first time that such a cooling system has been operated at Fraunhofer IWES, it got confirmed that this type of cooling performed very reliably." "Sometimes less really is more: 40 per cent less weight and smaller dimensions than a comparable permanent magnet synchronous generator – these EcoSwing features are only possible thanks to superconductivity. With this solution just a fraction of the magnetically active material is required to outperform the power density of conventional generators. Since superconductors have practically no electrical resistance, the size of the conductor cross-section can be drastically reduced. This is a highly promising property for the development of future turbine generations." Image: https://www.iwes.fraunhofer.de/en/press---media/ecoswing-superconducting-generator-proves-itself-on-the-test-ben/_jcr_content/contentPar/sectioncomponent/sectionParsys/imagerow/imageComponent2/image.img.large.jpg/1527518952113_EcoSwing-KryogeneratorKuehlung68.jpg https://www.iwes.fraunhofer.de/en/press---media/ecoswing-sup... Article: https://www.iwes.fraunhofer.de/en/press---media/ecoswing-superconducting-generator-proves-itself-on-the-test-ben.html https://www.iwes.fraunhofer.de/en/press---media/ecoswing-sup...
- petre 8y agoPress releases and presentations say they used a direct-drive permanent-magnet generator with a full power converter and replaced the rotor. So it's most probably DC. https://ecoswing.eu/project https://ecoswing.eu/project
- lokopodium 8y agoWould be awesome to fit air liquifiers there as well to replenish the coolant. After all, it's a bunch of pumps and radiators.
- fromthestart 8y agoHow does the efficiency of this design compare to standard conductor turbines, especially with the added energy cost of cooling?
- mikro2nd 8y agoI suspect that those are the sorts of question this first installation is supposed to answer. They'll certainly have models for efficiency, cost, lifetime, maintenance, etc. but they remain models and field-testing the reality is absolutely the step they appear to be taking here. This was alluded to in the article itself, where they described the cooling unit as previously untested in the relatively dirty conditions under which a wind-generator operates, as opposed the previous applications of the cooler operating in hospitals and clean lab environments.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Nasrudith 8y agoIt is interesting to see that it is apparently viable - enough to not be a novelty/joke. Given materials one upgrade a stationary bicycle generator to use superconductors. Unless it became both much cheaper and much higher temperature there would be basically no reason to do so but you could. Megawatt Turbines should certainly be able to sustain it but I wonder how the math works out in terms of both performance and balance sheets.
- everyone 8y agoIs this the same tape that is making fusion more feasible? https://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/topics/sparc https://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/topics/sparc
- garyclarke27 8y agoWould this make sense in a Tesla Semi Truck? Cheaper lighter, electric motors are essentially the same as generators in reverse.
- endymi0n 8y agoThis starts getting viable only now on a turbine scale of several Megawatts, with a very continuous workload. Scale this down to a car delivering an average of just a few kW that is driven maybe an hour or two per day and you‘ll lose all that efficiency to just cooling down the motor to -240•C and keeping it there.
- fyfy18 8y agoI assume that's why GP was talking about Tesla trucks. If a truck has two drivers it can be used for nearly a whole day - assuming the batteries could keep up.
- MRD85 8y agoWho needs two drivers when the trucks are self driving and can operate safely 24 hours per day?
- garyclarke27 8y agoYes or even a Road Train with say 3 drivers on board for 24 hour use, big shortage of drivers in US apparantly. Road train must be more feasible now, software should be able to easily steer multiple trailers with independent steering ,forward in same path as cab and for reversing which would be tricky without such.
- ovi256 8y agoI get your point about the difference of scale in power but cars routinely reach 100 kW - that's just 134HP after all. Floor the gas pedal on a mid-size sedan or a small truck and there you have it, 100kW. Good point about the load cycle.
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- chopin 8y agoI'd be interested in the failure modes of this, especially when the cooling malfunctions suddenly (or along with a failing temperature sensor).
- rbanffy 8y agoThose would be interesting indeed, as well as the transition to/from superconductivity of the rotor. I'd imagine that, when the rotor loses superconductivity, it'd becomes an insulator and the whole thing would be a rotating ceramic brick inside the fixed coils. There would be no torque to counter the wind, so it'd rotate faster, maybe fast enough to overheat the bearings.
- londons_explore 8y agoAll the energy in the superconductors magnetic field is suddenly released into heat, which will make it get hot and boil off all the helium it's sitting in. The generator will then have no magnetic field, so generate no power, and start to spin faster and faster. Hopefully there are some breaks to stop it before this happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6SuCut91WY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6SuCut91WY
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoLooks like the turbine blades are variable probably pitch[1], so that would have to fail as well. 1. https://ecoswing.eu/project https://ecoswing.eu/project
- arijun 8y agoIn July there was a excellent IEEE article [1] on the potential and the difficulties of superconducting turbines. This project (Ecoswing) is mentioned there, although it seems they switched from YBCO to GdBaCuO. [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/the-troubled-quest-for-the-superconducting-wind-turbine https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/the-troubled-quest...