Electrical loss? This is a job for superconductivity!
Clean-generating electricity is one thing – transmitting it without sacrificing the lion’s share is a whole other techno-puzzle.
Enter NextSwitch, a Stony Brook startup working on new applications in the increasingly important world of high-temperature superconductivity. Brookhaven Technology Group (BTG) President Dr. Paul Farrell and Dr. Slowa Solovyov, BTG’s vice president and chief scientist, launched NextSwitch in 2015 to leverage several technologies – including a superconductor super-switch Dr. Solovyov developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory – into indispensable tools for high-temp energy transmissions.
At the top of their list is a superconducting device that can transmit large amounts of electrical energy with minimal loss – zero loss, actually, for direct-current (DC) applications (electrons flowing in one direction). Working at one of the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC) laboratories, Dr. Solovyov and his team are working to reduce what Dr. Solovyov calls “an intrinsic loss” when transmitting to alternating-current (AC) power, where electrons change directions.
(For the record, AC is the best way to transmit electricity over long distances.)
In addition to conducting, superbly, at really hot temperatures, the device includes a “switching technology” that can cut the electrical current in just 5 milliseconds in case of emergency. The “fault-current limiter” was designed by Dr. Solovyov and Dr. Qiang Li, leader of the Advanced Energy Materials Group in Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Sciences Division.
The device – which can also be programmed to conduct different currents at different times, maximizing energy efficiency – has proven itself in a small-scale prototype capable of zapping about 1,000 amperes on their way.
And it’s just one of the amazing superconductivity applications being spun out of the BTG spinoff. Also powering up is a transmission cable made of a high-temperature superconducting ceramic, ideal for fusion reactors and superconducting generators.
With so much cutting-edge R&D in play, collaboration is key. NextSwitch, a client of the Clean Energy Business Incubator Program, partners frequently with Massachusetts-based energy-tech company American Superconductor, and the early-stage energy enterprise has found many like-minded friends at the AERTC, which has been “very useful” to both NextSwitch and BTG, according to Dr. Solovyov.
“It’s mostly the equipment they let you use, all the analytical instrumentations that you can access readily,” he says. “And you can interact with all of these other businesses, which is helpful also.”
Those resources will be key as BTG presses forward on its next big project, developing those superconducting cables for fusion reactors.
“Right now, it’s important, with people having a second look at fusion,” Dr. Solovyov notes. “There’s quite a bit of private funding for fusion-reaction companies that are looking to develop compact, inexpensive fusion reactors.”
The Brookhaven Technology Group, naturally, fits right in – that superconducting ceramic is “the only material that lets you generate ultra-high magnetic fields, which you need to contain the fusion plasma,” according to Dr. Solovyov.
It’s a mouthful and a mindful, but with its ceramic superconductor set and its efficient transmitter/emergency brake system ready to scale up, BTG and its spinoff have got the goods – and they’re getting serious with those fusion-reactor investors.
“We have a couple of grants from the Department of Energy,” Dr. Solovyov notes. “But we are looking for private funding. We are looking to raise about $5 million to scale it up to distribution levels.
“And when we do, we’ll be looking for a manufacturing partner.”