A Study on the Characteristics of Voltage Distribution of Stacked YBCO Coated Conductors in Series Connection

In order to apply superconducting electric machineries such as a Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (SFCL) to the power grid, the single module should be connected in series to have reasonable size. Superconducting tapes in the module also should be stacked to satisfy requirements such as large operation current of the power grid. This is because a single superconducting tape has restricted applicable current capacity. Moreover especially in SFCL at the fault, there should be equal voltage distribution in series-connected SFCL modules. In this paper, we investigated the voltage distribution in fault current of series-connected YBCO coated conductors (CC). Depending on characteristics of the CC samples such as critical current, even voltage distribution could be achieved or not. In addition, the effect of stacked CC on the change of voltage distribution comparing to non-stack cases in series connection was confirmed by experiments. As the CC stacked, voltage difference could be reduced.