بررسی اجمالی فعالیت های R & D در برنامه های کاربردی ابررسانایی به دستگاه های قدرت در ژاپن

generators with low temperature superconductor superconducting field windings, high temperature superconductor (HTS) power cables, HTS fault current limiters and HTS transformers had high R&D priorities and are expected to come into the real applications in the years of 2011–2015. Based on this result, the government decided to raise three national projects in the year of 2000 to develop those apparatuses together with flywheel energy storage. Beside of those three projects, there are two more national projects for fundamental material technology developments for HTS applications (raised in 1998) and R&D of SMES (raised in 1998). Important results are coming out now, though most of the projects are in early stage of the project term.

Specific situations of the electric power systems in Japan are very high density of electric demands in metropolitan areas, long distance bulk power transmission, long distance inter-connection of the power systems. In those situations, the electric power companies keep supplying reliable and high quality electricity to consumers. Due to widely spreading information technology and steady electrical shift of energy consumption, the density and amount of electric power demands keep growing especially in highly populated metropolitan areas. However, sites for facilities to reinforce electricity supply to cope with the increases in the demand become more severely limited in large cities by various factors including high cost of land, environmental regulations and public opinions. Beside this, amount of bulk power transmitted from remote areas are increasing. Those situations increase possibilities of deterioration of power quality and instability in operation of the power system. Therefore, there is a fear that difficulties might occurs in the future to maintain the stable operation of the power system and high power quality. Application of superconductivity can be effective solutions of those difficulties by improving efficiency and compactness, increasing power density, breaking capacity limits of electric power devices and creating new functional devices. Therefore, electric power companies are expecting to solve their problems by applications of superconductivity and major Japan's electric power companies are involved in the R&D activities on superconducting devices as main players. In this back ground now NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) is conducting five national R&D projects related to superconducting power apparatuses including a project of fundamental material technology developments with firm supports from the electric power companies. There are also in-house R&D activities conducted by electric power companies.