A novel shielded inductive superconducting fault current limiter (iSFCL) project has received grant approval from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi). The grant gives the green light to the four companies involved in further development and demonstration of the technology: Bruker Advanced Supercon GmbH, Bruker HTS GmbH (both subsidiaries of Bruker Energy and Supercon Technologies, Inc. or BEST), AREVA Energietechnik GmbH and Stadwerke Augsburg Energie GmbH. The project is expected to last three years and will culminate in the demonstration of the iSFCL device in the electrical grid in Stadwerke, Germany.
The BMWi will provide half of the funding for the project, which has a budget of 7.7 million Euro. During the first two years, the companies will focus on development and production of the iSFCL device. Extensive power testing will follow, along with a none-month field trial to test the technology’s reliability.
The iSFCL will incorporate proprietary concepts and technology from the four companies, who all bring expertise in superconducting technology to the table. The partners have been working on a concept and a pre-prototype module for an iSFCL device that could one day play an integral role in energy infrastructure applications.
“We expect that this iSFCL design will be able to meet the requirements of critical power customers for high performance, reliability and durability in electrical distribution applications,” said Dr. Hans-Udo Klein, Vice President of Business Development for BEST. “The iSFCL has the potential to be a true ‘smart grid’ device with its ability to rapidly react, protect the electrical distribution network against damages, and then to recover quickly without external triggering or service calls.”
