IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 17, NO.
2, JUNE 2007
Design of a Single Phase 33 MVA HTS Transformer
With OLTC
S. W. Lee, S. B. Byun, W. S. Kim, J. K. Lee, and K. D. Choi
Abstract—HTS transformers which have been developed until
now had only fundamental structures. Among the auxiliary
functions of conventional transformers, voltage regulating is the
most important one. For the voltage regulation, conventional
transformers are equipped with on load tap changers (OLTCs).
In this paper, we investigate the possibility of the HTS trans-
former with OLTC. For the case study, we designed a single
phase 33 MVA HTS transformer with OLTC. It is one of three
individual HTS transformers which composes a 3 phase, 100 MVA
transformer. It is expected to substitute for a 3 phase, 60 MVA
conventional transformer in Korea. The parameters of an HTS
transformer are varied due to the gap length between primary and
secondary windings. The length was decided for the transformer
to have the impedance of 12%. Its size was limited to the one
of the conventional transformer. The characteristics of the HTS
transformer were analysed in both case of having OLTC and not.
Index Terms—AC loss, HTS transformer, on load tap changer
(OLTC), tertiary winding.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE high temperature superconducting (HTS) transformers
T have many benefits over conventional transformers. At the
early stage of the development of the HTS transformer, energy
saving and operating cost reduction due to the high efficiency
was considered as the major advantages. But the reduced weight
and size of the HTS transformer can be more advantageous than
the high efficiency in some situation. The size effect of the HTS
transformer is the most important merit in Korea. Standard of
maximum power capacity of the 3 phase transformer for 154 kV
power line is 60 MVA and most of them are installed in base-
ments of buildings in downtown of major cities. Though 150%
increase of current power load in 2017 is predicted, it is hard
to find a solution for increasing the capacity of facilities, es-
pecially for power transformers. If an HTS transformer sub-
stitutes for the conventional one, its size could become 1/3 or
1/2 of the conventional one. Even if it is not so critical benefit
for the substations which are built on the field or in the moun-
tain far away from metropolis, there are about 50 underground
Manuscript received August 25, 2006. This work was supported in part by
KESRI (R-2005-7-090), which is funded by Ministry of Commerce, Industry,
and Energy (MOCIE).
S. W. Lee and W. S. Kim are with the Electric Engineering and Science Re-
search Institute, Seoul, Korea (e-mail: leeso23@kpu.ac.kr; ottor@snu.ac.kr).
S. B. Byun and K. D. Choi are with the Graduate School of Energy,
Korea Polytechnic University, Sihung, Korea (e-mail: jesus858@hanmail.net;
choildal@kpu.ac.kr).
J. K. Lee is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Woosuk Univer-
sity, Chunbuk 565-701, Korea (e-mail: jikwang@woosuk.ac.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2007.899677
1051-8223/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
1939
substations at the basements of large buildings in Seoul. There
is no way to increase the power capacity of the substations in
Seoul except constructing new buildings [1]. In Korea, 154 kV
class three phase power transformer is composed of 3 individual
single phase ones. The design criteria which are considered for
the single phase one can be directly applied to the three phase
one. We designed a single phase 33 MVA, 154 kV/22.9 kV HTS
transformer with On Load Tap Changer (OLTC). It supplies the
function that the power transformer fits the voltage ratio be-
tween primary and secondary windings while the transformer
is on load. We also considered tertiary HTS windings in the de-
sign of the transformer. The primary and secondary windings of
each phase are Y-connected, but tertiary windings are delta-con-
nected to circulate and then cancel third harmonics in current of
each phase. They also supply the power which is needed for
the operation of substation. BSCCO 2223 PIT wires look to
have limitation for the application to ac machine, especially to
power transformers, which are exposed to much higher perpen-
dicular magnetic field than HTS power transmission cables are.
So we designed the transformer on the basis that the windings
are wound with YBCO coated conductors. This paper describes
the conceptual design of a single phase 33 MVA 154 kV class
HTS transformer with OLTC. We have designed an HTS trans-
former without OLTC. We compared their characteristics with
the ones of a 20 MVA conventional transformer.
II. DESIGN OF HTS TRANSFORMER
The rated primary and secondary voltages are 89.91 kV and
13.22 kV, respectively because the primary and secondary wind-
ings are Y-connected. And we adopted shell type for the core.
The primary winding is divided into 2 cylindrical sections with
different radii. The primary, secondary, and tertiary windings are
located concentrically. The inner section of the primary winding
is composed of the continuous disk winding and the outer part is
the double pancake winding because the outer one should have
taps for OLTC. Sub-cooled liquid nitrogen of 65 K will circu-
late to cool down the windings and the design value of operating
temperature is 69 K.
A. Design Targets
Goal of study is to show the possibility to construct a com-
pact HTS transformer with an efficiency which should be com-
parable to the efficiency of a conventional one. In order to eval-
uate the design of HTS transformer system, a target specification
is needed. Tables I and II show the specifications of HTS trans-
former and the target of HTS transformer, respectively. Data of
Table II are based on the 20 MVA conventional transformer.
1940 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 17, NO. 2, JUNE 2007
TABLE I
SPECIFICATIONS OF THE HTS TRANSFORMER
TABLE II
DESIGN TARGETS OF HTS TRANSFORMER
TABLE III
SPECIFICATIONS OF COATED CONDUCTOR
B. Specification of Coated Conductor
According to the expectations of the industrial manufacturers,
critical current of 300 A/cm at liquid nitrogen temperature is
the goal for commercialization. To design the HTS transformer,
we determined the specifications of the coated conductor based
on the trend of development as shown in Table III. The wind-
ings of HTS transformer are immersed in a bath of sub-cooled
liquid nitrogen and coolant is circulated through transfer lines
by a circulating pump. The perpendicular component of mag-
netic field at the coil ends was calculated to have a maximum
value of 0.18 T.
Therefore HTS conductor for windings assuming a maximum
operating temperature of 69 K and a magnetic filed of 0.18 T.
In order to conduct large current, several tapes have to be con-
nected in parallel. So the number of parallel tapes is 5 for the
rated primary current of 371.2 amps and 30 for the secondary
of 2,496 amps.
The rated current was determined for the load factor of each
coated conductor to be 70%. Though non-uniform distribution
of currents and large ac losses by parallel HTS wires are
the major problems in manufacturing transformer coils, we
Fig. 1. Arrangement of windings of the 33 MVA HTS transformer.
assumed well transposed coated conductors and so uniform dis-
tribution of the current. It can be realized by wiring technology
such as Roebel bar [2].
C. Design of HTS Transformer With OLTC
When the load in a power network increases, the voltage de-
creases. To maintain the network voltage at a constant level,
conventional power transformers are usually equipped with On
Load Tap Changers (OLTCs). The OLTC changes the power
transformer’s turns ratio in a number of predefined steps and
the secondary voltage is changed by this. Each step usually rep-
resents a change of 1.25% in low voltage side. Standard tap
changers offer the change of 10% of rated voltage.
For the automatic voltage regulation, the HTS winding is de-
signed to adopt an OLTC. Typically the automatic voltage regu-
lator (AVR) regulates voltage at the secondary side of the power
transformer. The control method is based on a step-by-step prin-
ciple. That is, a control pulse, one at a time, will be issued to the
on load tap changing mechanism to move OLTC up or down by
one step position at 65 K. The connecting tap points of the HTS
windings for tap change can cause a thermal problem. Therefore
we designed the tap selecting part of OLTC equipment to be in-
stalled in the liquid nitrogen and the other parts to be installed
at room temperature as in the conventional transformer. For in-
stalling tap points on the primary winding, it is divided into two
cylindrical sections. The HTS transformer has 4 concentrically
arranged windings as represented in Fig. 1.
From inside to outside, there are tertiary winding, half of pri-
mary one, secondary one, and the other half of primary one. The
tap points are installed on the outer half of the primary winding.
The inner half is composed of the continuous winding and the
outer is combined with the double pancake winding and con-
tinuous disk winding. The continuous winding of the outer half
has no tap points.
D. Winding of 33 MVA HTS Transformer
The transformer windings are cooled by sub-cooled liquid
nitrogen of 65 K. But the temperature of windings increases
LEE et al.: DESIGN OF A SINGLE PHASE 33 MVA HTS TRANSFORMER WITH OLTC 1941

due to the ac losses during operation, so the operating tempera-

ture is decided to be 69 K. Perpendicular component of leakage
flux in the windings generates very higher ac losses than par-
allel component does. ac losses should be restrained as small
as possible because the cost of the cooling system is still too
high. Therefore the structure of windings should be optimized
for ac losses. From this point of view, the double pancake wind-
ings are not considered as useful. But double pancake wind-
ings have advantages over the layer ones for a high voltage
power transformer such as good insulation and limitation of
voltage stress. So we have proposed a new winding method for
high voltage HTS power transformers and called it as contin-
uous disk winding (CDW). It has advantages of both layer and
double pancake windings. It can have as many disks as we want
without the joints between disks, unlike double pancake wind-
ings [3]. The primary, secondary and tertiary windings are ar-
ranged concentrically. Fig. 2. AC losses and % impedance according to the gap between windings.
The length of radial gap has to be adjusted according to the
voltage stress between windings and leakage impedance of the
transformer. HTS transformers until now had very low percent TABLE IV
RESULT DESIGN OF 33 MVA HTS TRANSFORMER
impedances because of low ac loss. But for the field test of ACCORDING TO THE 100 VOLTS/TURN
HTS transformer, it should have the internal percent impedance
which is requested from power transmission system. In Korea,
the power company requires the percent impedance of 15% for
60 MVA conventional transformers. For the 100 MVA HTS
transformer, the impedance of 12% was decided by a prior re-
search for new HTS power system. Fig. 1 shows the arrangement
of windings for the HTS transformer. Tertiary winding is neces-
sary to suppress the third harmonics component and to compen-
sate for asymmetric loads of the secondary. For the calculation
of ac losses in coated conductor windings, the same technique
for BSCCO windings can be applied. The parallel and perpen-
dicular components of magnetic field in the continuous winding
are numerically calculated. And the ac losses from perpendic-
ular magnetic fields and parallel fields are calculated by the strip
operational loss of transformer can be reduced to about 86% of
and slab model equation [4], [5]. Calculated ac loss is consti-
that of conventional transformer. The core loss of the designed
tuted of magnetization loss and transport current loss. We cal-
33 MVA HTS transformer was estimated about 30 kW. And ac
culated ac losses in the winding when the primary and secondary
losses of HTS windings were calculated about 8.26 kW. The
windings conduct rated currents and the tertiary winding doesn’t
energy dissipation in the HTS transformer leads to evaporation
conduct. Fig. 2 shows the ac losses and percent impedance vari-
of the coolant or an increase of thermal load on the cooling ma-
ation of the 33 MVA HTS transformer due to the variation of
chine. This ac loss has to be taken into account with the cooling
the gap between windings.
penalty when the costs of HTS transformer and conventional
The ac loss and % impedance of the HTS windings in 33 MVA
ones are compared with each other. The cooling penalty is de-
HTS transformer can be calculated from numerical analysis.
fined as the Carnot factor divided by the efficiency of the cooling
2-dimentional numerical analysis was performed at the cross
system.
section of the multiple HTS wire assuming the perfect transposi-
The cooling penalty factor is 19 W/W for stirling coolers in
tion and uniform distribution of the transport current. According
this paper. So the equivalent loss of HTS transformer is 157 kW.
to the increase of the gap between windings, % impedance and
Therefore the total loss was 187 kW and the efficiency of the
ac losses increase. Ac loss and % impedance are very sensitive
HTS transformer was 99.44%, which is almost equal that of the
on the width of gap between windings.
conventional 20 MVA transformer. The dimensions of the HTS
III. DESIGN RESULT OF HTS TRANSFORMER transformer and conventional one are 4.6 and 5.51, respectively.
The efficiency of the 20 MVA, 154 kV/22.9 kV conventional
IV. CRYOGENIC COOLING SYSTEM
transformer is about 99.3%. The copper loss and iron core loss
are about 100 kW and 33 kW, respectively. The design results of The conceptual cooling system for single phase transformer
33 MVA, 154 kV/22.9 kV HTS transformer is shown in Table IV is simply sketched in Fig. 3. Sub-cooled liquid nitrogen is cir-
at 100 volts/turn. The size of transformer can be reduced to culated by cryogenic pump. The cryostat for reservoir of liquid
about 83% of the conventional 20 MVA transformer. And the nitrogen is made of stainless steel and cryo-coolers are installed
1942
Fig. 3. Conceptual design for single phase transformer.
Fig. 4. Graphics of the LN2 supply and return at the main cryostat.
on it. The heat exchanger inside the cryostat supplies liquid ni-
trogen of 65 K to the transformer cryostat.
which is cooled down to 65 K at the heat exchanger in
the reservoir cryostat flows through a transfer line into the trans-
former cryostat. It is divided at the bottom to flow into the cir-
cumferential pipe and is injected through the hole to the wind-
ings as shown in Fig. 4. Warmed is sent back to reservoir
cryostat through the 1-in diameter outlet at the top of . transposition for HTS power transformer,” Magnet Technology, vol. 19,
The cooling load is the sum of ac losses, the radiation from
the wall and the heat conduction through the current lead. It
is estimated to be about 25 kW for 3 phase. Five LPC-8 stir-
ling cryo-coolers which can extract 28 kW at 65 K and 3 cryo-
pumps are installed at reservoir cryostat to supply . Each
cryo-pump supplies of 65 K to the windings with the flow
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 17, NO. 2, JUNE 2007
Fig. 5. 100 MVA HTS transformer system layout.
rate of 150 liter/min per phase to keep the winding temperature
under 67 K. The reservoir cryostat has a height of 2 m and di-
ameter of 1.8 m. It can hold the 2200 liter of . Fig. 5 is the
system layout for 100 MVA 3-phase HTS transformer. Much of
the space is occupied by the cooler.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we conceptually designed a 33 MVA
154 kV/22.9 kV HTS transformer with OLTC. The designed
HTS transformer was small in size and high in efficiency
compared with the conventional transformer. In order to reduce
the ac loss in HTS winding, windings have the concentric
arrangement. The continuous disk winding and layer windings
were adopted in this HTS transformer. And its electrical char-
acteristics were analysed for the variation of the gap between
windings. The result of design shows that the 33 MVA HTS
transformer can substitute for the 20 MVA conventional trans-
former. We proposed a suitable HTS transformer model for
future power distribution system in Korea.
REFERENCES
[1] S. W. Lee, W. S. Kim, S. Y. Han, Y. I. Hwang, and K. D. Choi, “Con-
ceptual design of a single phase 33 MVA HTS transformer with a ter-
tiary winding,” The Korean Superconductivity Society, vol. 7, no. 2, pp.
162–166, 2006.
[2] W.-S. Kim et al., “Fabrication and test of multiple HTS wire with
Sept. 2005.
[3] Y.-I. Hwang et al., “Continuous disk type HTS winding of high voltage
power transformer,” Magnet Technology, vol. 19, Sept. 2005.
[4] M. Wilson, Superconducting Magnet. New York: Clarendon Press,
1983.
[5] E. H. Brandt and M. Indenbom, “Type-II super-conductor strip with
current in a perpendicular magnetic field,” Physical Review B, vol. 48,
pp. 12893–12906, Nov. 1993.