Superconductor Technologies, Inc. (STI) has shipped hundreds of meters of Conductus wire to nine customers. Four of these customers are in the second stage of the wire evaluation process while five are in the first stage of the process. Six of these customers are new.
For the first time, STI shipped wire that included both 10 mm and 4 mm wire widths that performed at currents as high as 450 Amps per centimeter (A/cm) width. The customers are using the wire for qualification testing in various product designs for applications that include superconducting fault current limiters, superconducting power cables, HTS high field magnets, and quantum levitation devices. This diverse set of applications demonstrates that Conductus wire is applicable to numerous solutions in the Smart Grid architecture, advanced physics and high efficiency transportation fields.
“Over the past three months, our pilot production RCE-CDR equipment has produced wire that achieved very high critical current performance,” said Adam Shelton, STI’s VP of marketing and product line management.
“We are especially encouraged that our fully loaded RCE-CDR pilot equipment produced Conductus wire with over 90 percent of the output performing at an average of 350A/cm. This production milestone clearly demonstrates, on a pilot level, the effectiveness of STI’s proprietary RCE-CDR process for manufacturing high performance, economical and commercially scalable wire to meet our customers’ needs.”
Shelton continued, “The company continues to be capacity constrained and we expect the current commitments and orders to consume all the wire we can produce for at least the next three months. We are preparing our Austin facility and assembling the 1 km RCE-CDR. When this machine is running at full capacity, STI plans to produce 750 km per year of high critical current wire that we expect to provide high uniformity across its length and width. Higher critical current performance allows our customers to deploy efficient devices while delivering the superior uniformity that reduces alternating current loss and improves the magnetic properties of the wire. All of these improvements are valuable advances in the drive to make high temperature superconducting wire a viable technology for commercial use.”