Potential Electric Power Applications for Magnesium Diboride

ABSTRACTThe newly discovered superconductor, MgB2, has significant potential for a number of electric power applications, even though its critical temperature, TC, is “only” 39 K. In recent months, there has been rapid improvement in its critical state parameters, JC and H*, properties crucial to deployment in power devices, which now rival NbTi at 4.2 K, and equal or surpass many of the high temperature superconducting copper oxide perovskites in the 20 – 25 K range. Moreover, substantial progress has been achieved in realizing wire embodiments that appear economically scalable to commercial production. In this paper, we will review several opportunities to exploit these developments for transformer and electric cable applications, and hint at the possibility of a novel and visionary power delivery system centered on an MgB2-based dc cable cooled by gaseous or liquid hydrogen supplying both electrical and chemical energy to the end user.