Design Study of MgB2 SMES Coil for Effective Use of Renewable Energy

In order to use effectively renewable energy sources such as wind and photovoltaic power generations, we propose a new system, called Advanced Superconducting Power Conditioning System (ASPCS), that is composed of superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES), fuel cell-electrolyzer (FC-EL), hydrogen storage, dc/dc and dc/ac converters, and controller. The new system compensates the fluctuating electric power generations with SMES having characteristics of quick response and large I/O power and with hydrogen energy having characteristics of large storage capacity. The ASPCS will be combined with a liquid hydrogen station for FC vehicles. The SMES is a key component of the ASPCS to compensate the fast fluctuations of the renewable energy generations that cannot be compensated by prediction using the Kalman filtering method. The design study of the 50 MJ SMES coil was performed with an MgB2 conductor to be operated at 5 T maximum and 20 K by using liquid hydrogen of the FCV stations. The stability and ac losses of the coil were estimated in this study.