Concept Design of a Portable Superconducting Transformer Based on Conductors in Tube Cables

Portable substations based on large capacity transformers have shown great advantages for practical demand from natural disaster area and remote area, as well as the short-term power grid maintenance. However, the capacity of traditional portable transformer is restricted by transportation weight limit in the application area. In this paper, concept design of a 110 kV/63 MVA superconducting transformer with compact size and light weight is presented. The superconducting materials used in this transformer are all in structure of a so-called conductors in tube (CIT) cable. Firstly, the electrical design of portable transformer is carried out by using traditional transformer design manual. Then, both simulations and experiments are carried out to verify the feasibility of CIT cables. Finally detail design of CIT cables for both high voltage winding and low voltage winding are presented based on finite element method.