2344 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 13, NO.

2, JUNE 2003

Design Optimization of High-Temperature

Superconducting Power Transformers
Thomas L. Baldwin, John I. Ykema, Cliff L. Allen, and James L. Langston

Abstract—As HTS transformers begin to move into utility and The aim of this paper is to consolidate considerations required
commercial applications, engineering must optimize the designs in HTS transformer winding design and optimization from var-
for AC losses and total ownership costs while meeting the perfor- ious works that have been reported in the literature.
mance criteria and application requirements. Transformer manu-
facturers use cost optimization techniques during the design phase
to minimize material costs and satisfy the utility’s loss evaluation II. TRANSFORMER SPECIFICATIONS
requirement. This paper presents the modifications necessary in
transformer design and optimization to handle high-temperature In this paper, we focus the design scope by considering a
superconductors as the winding material. These changes include class of medium-power, three-phase transformers that are used
AC losses, short-circuit stresses, and cooling loads. Design results in shipboard applications. Typical power ratings range from 0.5
are presented for a five-legged core, three-phase, 3.5-MVA power MVA to 5.0 MVA, and the nominal primary voltages ratings are
transformer optimized for reduced weight and footprint space for
electrical distribution onboard ships. 4.16 kV and 6.6 kV at 60 Hz. The nominal secondary voltage
ratings range from 120 V to 600 V, representing the utiliza-
Index Terms—High-temperature superconductors, optimization tion voltages. The transformers are located within ship compart-
methods, power transformers.
ments where oil-filled transformers are necessarily prohibited.
Ship distribution networks use both three-leg core and five-leg
I. INTRODUCTION core transformers.
In this investigation we use a five-leg warm core with cylin-
T HE development of high-temperature superconducting
power apparatus has made remarkable progress during
the last several years. The advantages and potential applica-
drical windings in individual cryostats. The water-cooled iron
core operates at room temperature. The warm-bore cryostat con-
tions of the new technology to the utility industry have been tains the HTS windings. Bi-2223 tape windings are cooled by
demonstrated in laboratories and with industrial prototypes [1]. two cryo-coolers for each of the three phases with conductive
The next step leading to commercialization is developing good metal cooling strips running axially through the coils. The wind-
design techniques and manufacturing processes. The future ings are kept under vacuum with no liquid cryogen, which could
success of HTS power apparatus depends on achieving lower pose a safety issue in confined spaces. This cooling system per-
AC losses and reducing the total ownership costs. Optimized mits the winding to operate over a 35 K to 80 K temperature
design techniques play an important role in minimizing cost range without substantial design changes.
and losses [2]. HTS transformer designs must be concerned about the
On the surface, transformer, design especially for small power quenching phenomena. Coil quenching may be actively uti-
transformers, appears to be a simple and rudimentary task. Wire lized to provide fault current limiting. Otherwise, the design
sizes are chosen based on current ratings, core dimensions are should not allow coil quenching under any expected operating
selected according to peak flux densities, and so forth [3]. While condition. In this design, the operation of the transformer is not
it is true that transformers can be designed using simple rules, interrupted due to coil quenching by short-circuit and inrush
followed by design optimization, care must be taken when mi- currents.
grating from copper or aluminum conductors to HTS materials.
Major differences that must be accounted for include the AC III. DESIGN CONSTRAINTS
loss mechanism, critical currents, and mechanical limits of the Every transformer must meet performance requirements
conductor. without damaging itself or the surrounding system when ab-
normal events occur. Such constraints are generally nonlinear
Manuscript received August 5, 2002. This work was supported in part by the functions of the design variables. The major design constraints
U.S. Department of Defense and by the Office of Naval Research. for a HTS transformer are discussed next.
T. L. Baldwin is with the Center for Advanced Power Systems and the
FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Tallahassee, FL 32310 USA (e-mail:
[email protected]). A. Coil Design
J. I. Ykema is with SPD Technologies Inc., L-3 Communications, Philadel-
phia, PA 19116 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). We selected concentric cylindrical coils for the windings. The
C. L. Allen is with the Ship Systems, Nothrop Grumman Corporation, advantage over pancake shape windings is a higher critical cur-
Pascagoula, MS 39568 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). rent density due to a lower radial flux density of the stray mag-
J. L. Langston is with the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Tallahassee,
FL 32310 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). netic field. The critical current also increases by a factor of 3.5
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2003.813123 when the operating temperature is lowered to 35 K. Achieving
1051-8223/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
BALDWIN et al.: DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF HIGH-TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTING POWER TRANSFORMERS 2345

Fig. 1. Critical current ratio as a function of the magnetic flux density parallel
to the Bi 2223 tape surface.
Fig. 3. Transformer leakage flux of a LH winding transformer. Only the
lower half of the windings are shown. The winding and core are cylindrically
symmetrical about the core centerline.

where is the ampere-turns of the coil and is the coil

length. The peak radial magnetic flux density is traditionally not
considered, but can be approximated at the end of a coil by

(2)

where is the width of the tape.

The conductor losses are dependent on the transport current
and the transversal magnetic fields, and are dominated by hys-
teresis at 60 Hz. From the self, parallel, and perpendicular mag-
netic fields three loss components are summed to give the total
Fig. 2. Critical current ratio as a function of the magnetic flux density loss. The self-field loss is given by the Norris equation for a su-
perpendicular to the Bi 2223 tape surface. Note how rapidly the critical current
decreases with increasing flux density when compared with Fig. 1.
perconductor with elliptical cross-section [5]

higher current densities effectively reduces the conductor AC

losses. (3)
In a concentric winding, the conductor is exposed to a mag- where is the frequency and is the critical current of the
netic field oriented perpendicular to the current path. The field tape. The loss due to the magnetic field parallel to the width of
contains both parallel, , and perpendicular, , flux compo- the tape is described by [6];
nents with reference to the tape’s surface. To obtain the needed
current density in the Bi-2223 tape, the magnetic design must
not exceed a combination of perpendicular and parallel stray (4)
flux densities as established from Figs. 1 and 2, which graph
the tape’s characteristics [4]. For much of the winding’s length,
particularly near the axial center, the flux lines in the leakage where is the coefficient of effective conduction area, is the
channel are parallel to the core axis, as shown in Fig. 3. Near tape cross-sectional area, and is the full penetration field flux
the ends of the windings, some of the flux lines turn and cross density. Parameters and have been fitted to experimental
into the windings, so that the flux component at the conductor test data. The loss due to the perpendicular magnetic field is
has a radial component. described by [6];
The tape is wound with the wider edge oriented in the axial di-
rection as shown in the insert of Fig. 3. Consequently, the coil’s
axial field becomes for the tape. Likewise, the coil’s radial
(5)
field becomes . The peak axial flux density is found in the
where is a geometrical parameter, and is a critical mag-
middle of the coil’s height and is approximated by
netic field. Table I gives values for the Bi-2223 tape.
As a comparison, the current density for copper and alu-
minum conductors ranges from 1 to 4.5 A/mm (rms) with
(1) losses on the order of 15 to 60 mW/A-m. To be competitive,
2346 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, JUNE 2003

TABLE I As faults can happen during any part of the cycle, the
BI-2223 REINFORCED-WIRE CHARACTERISTICS worst-case transient fault current is used to determine the
mechanical stress. From the transformer standards [10],

(8)
- -

where is the open-circuit coil voltage, - and -

are the real and reactive components of the complex impedance,
and is the transformer leakage inductance. The resulting
asymmetrical fault current is used to obtain the magnetic
leakage field surrounding the coils and the resulting mechanical
forces on the windings.

C. Leakage Reactance
the AC losses in HTS tapes operating at 77 K must be ap-
As the ac resistance of the superconducting wire is small,
proximately 100 times smaller. The larger factor addresses the
the series impedance of the HTS transformer is almost entirely
coefficient of cooling for removing the heat.
made up of the leakage reactance. In power system operation
the impedance serves to limit the short-circuit current. The
B. Conductor Stresses From Large Currents
impedance is specified by the utility or by industry standards.
Conductors may experience large electromagnetic and me- HTS transformers will likely be designed to meet such a
chanical forces during short-circuit faults and energization con- constraint if it lacks active fault-current limiting technology.
ditions. Bi-2223 tapes experience a reduction in the critical cur- The leakage reactance between any two windings can be cal-
rent when placed under tension as indicated in Table I. The crit- culated by finite element methods that directly solve Maxwell’s
ical current is reduced by 5% at the critical stress point [4]. equations. In practice, simplified calculations have proven
The vector product of the leakage flux density and the current adequate, which assume that the amp-turns are uniformly
flowing in a conductor results in a radial force on the conductor. distributed along the windings, and the magnetic field only
The inner concentric winding is compressed with a radial in- contains axial components [11]. The leakage reactance is found
ward force, while the outer winding is expanded with an out- to be in terms of the winding dimensions, defined in Fig. 4, and
ward force. The outward radial force is transferred into the con- number of turns,
ductor as a tensile hoop stress. The maximum stress, ,
happens in the innermost turn of the outer coil [8]

(6) (9)

where is the ampere-turns in the primary winding, is the for a two-coil, LH arranged transformer. For a three-coil, LHL
axial length of the primary coil, is the rms current in the outer winding arrangement, we assume that the widths of the two low-
coil under tension, and is the diameter of the innermost con- voltage windings are equal and that the two leakage channels
ductor turn under tension. The maximum applied stress, which have equal gap distances,
may be caused by the inrush or fault current, should not ap-
proach the critical stress of the tape [9].
Whenever a transformer is re-energized, the flux change must
match the voltage according to Faraday’s law. Compounded by
the residual (or remanent) flux, the core is driven strongly into (10)
saturation, requiring a very large excitation or inrush current.
The inrush can be many times the normal load current, and is D. Cooling System
approximated by
The performance of the winding conductors is temperature
dependent. Generally, we can achieve reduced AC losses by
(7) lowering the operating temperature, but we are penalized with
an increased cooling cost for removing the heat.
where is the residual flux density, is the saturation flux A comprehensive thermal design optimization is presented in
density, is the effective cross-sectional area of the core, and [12], which balances the compactness of the windings with the
is the area inside the mean turn of the primary coil. For efficiency of the cooling system. The procedure includes a heat
3% silicon steel, the remanence is close to 90% of the peak transfer analysis for cooling load estimate and a thermodynamic
flux density, . Most transformers designs normally choose evaluation for cryogenic refrigeration. An optimum operating
in the range of 1.6 to 1.8 T, about 10% to 20% below the temperature exists that minimizes the overall power consump-
saturation flux density. tion. The optimal temperature for conduction-cooled concentric
BALDWIN et al.: DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF HIGH-TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTING POWER TRANSFORMERS 2347

the windings. The designs differ fundamentally in the winding

configuration, one being a LH design and the other as a LHL
design. The LHL provides a lower electrical length and reduced
leakage channel flux, resulting in lower AC conductor losses.
In addition, the hoop stress on a conductor is reduced consider-
ably with the LHL design, whereas the LH design exceeds the
mechanical limit, and therefore not a feasible design.

V. CONCLUSION
The success of high-temperature superconducting power
transformers depends on finding the niche opportunities
where the performance is superior to conventional oil-filled or
cast-coil power transformers to justify the higher costs. The
changes to the design optimization presented in this paper
Fig. 4. Relevant dimensions of the LHL concentric windings for calculating permit tailoring HTS power transformer for special application
the leakage impedance. at the lowest possible cost. A computer-aided design program
implements a transformer optimization while incorporating
TABLE II these concepts. The techniques will be expanded to include
HTS TRANSFORMER DESIGN RESULTS
new characteristics of HTS transformers such as fault current
limiting.
At present, the techniques are used to develop theoretical de-
signs of HTS transformers for research purposes. These tech-
niques can be applied directly to transformer manufacturing
computer-aided design systems.

REFERENCES
[1] W. V. Hassenzahl, “Applications of superconductivity to electric power
systems,” IEEE Power Engineering Review, vol. 20, pp. 4–7, May 2000.
[2] O. W. Andersen, “Optimized design of electric power equipment,” IEEE
Computer Applications in Power, vol. 4, pp. 11–15, Jan. 1991.
[3] W. M. Grady, R. Chan, M. J. Samotyj, R. J. Ferraro, and J. L. Bierschenk,
“A pc-based computer program for teaching the design and analysis of
dry-type transformers,” IEEE Trans. Pwr. Syst, vol. 7, pp. 709–717, May
1992.
[4] “American Superconductor, High Temperature Superconducting
Wire,” American Superconductor Corp, Westborough, MA,
ASC/HTS-FS-0004, 2002.
coil windings is in the range of 65 K to 75 K at the cold head [5] W. T. Norris, “Calculation of hysteresis losses in hard superconductors
of the cryo-cooler. Cooler temperatures are justified, only if the carrying ac: Isolated conductors and edges of thin sheets,” J. Phys. D.,
vol. 3, pp. 489–507, 1970.
amount of AC loss is substantially reduced. [6] N. Magnusson and A. Wolfbrandt, “AC losses in high-temperature
superconducting tapes exposed to longitudinal magnetic fields,”
IV. OPTIMIZATION RESULTS Cryogenics, vol. 41, pp. 721–724, 2001.
[7] D. Aized, E. C. Jones, G. Snitchler, J. Campbell, A. P. Malozemoff,
Transformer design optimization is a minimization of the cost and R. E. Schwall, “AC loss measurements on multifilamentary BSCCO
2223 high-temperature superconductors,” Advances in Cryogenic Engi-
of materials and losses. The flux density, current density, me- neering, vol. 42, pp. 581–586, 1996.
chanical force, and size limits, along with having the required [8] R. L. Bean, N. Chackan Jr., H. R. Moore, and E. C. Wentz, Transformers
leakage impedance, add constraints to the minimization. for the Electric Power Industry. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959, pp.
134–145.
In classical transformer optimization, a designer uses four to [9] M. Steurer and K. Fröhlich, “The impact of inrush currents on the me-
seven independent variables. Common quantities selected are chanical stress of high voltage power transformer coils,” IEEE Trans.
the core induction, number of turns, current densities for the Pwr. Delivery, vol. 17, pp. 155–160, Jan. 2002.
[10] IEEE Standard General Requirements for Dry-Type Distribution and
high and low windings, electrical length, and cooling channel Power Transformers, Including Those With Solid Cast and/or Resin-En-
size. In HTS transformer designs, the current densities should capsulated Windings, ANSI/IEEE Standard C57.12.01, 1998.
be maximized for optimal conductor utilization due to the high [11] R. M. Del Vecchio, B. Poulin, P. T. Feghali, D. M. Shah, and R. Ahuja,
Transformer Design Principles With Applications to Core Form Power
cost of the conductor. We selected the winding temperature to Transformers. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon and Breach, 2001,
replace the current density as an independent variable in the pp. 87–117.
optimization. [12] H.-M. Chang, Y. S. Choi, S. W. Van Sciver, and T. L. Baldwin, “Cryo-
genic cooling temperature of HTS transformers for compactness and ef-
Table II presents two trial design results for a 3.5 MVA trans- ficiency,” in Applied Superconductivity Conference, Houston, TX, Aug.
former. The Bi-2223 tape, characterized in Table I, is used in 4–9, 2002, Paper 2LG04.