Electricity Transmission and Distribution Technology Marketing Summaries

Superconductors are materials which carry electrical current without dissipation. However, feeding electrical current into a superconductor generates heat dissipation in the contacts and degrades maximum attainable current value. The degradation in contacts is also different depending on the different chemical nature of the superconducting materials.

Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory researchers have developed a high strength, lightweight aluminum wire for high-voltage power transmission with reduced electrical resistance for overhead electrical lines.

A previously unidentified metastable phase of a superconductive oxide exhibits high critical current density and irreversible magnetic field. This phase is stabilized by the use of a catalytically active substrate, CeO. The superconductor's performance is relatively insensitive to grain boundary misorientation. This second generation (2G) superconductor has a high critical temperature, high critical current and high irreversible magnetic field. Its performance is less dependent on grain... read more

Cyber attacks and invasions of privacy via advanced metering infrastructure have become a much greater concern as power information is shared over Internet connections. While conventional encryption techniques can address security concerns, few are able to address the need to protect consumer privacy—including privacy from the monitoring being done by the power company. The smart grid market is projected to reach $9.6 billion by 2015, so demand for improved metering techniques will... read more

As plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) become more popular, they create additional demand for electricity. Their emergence also raises a host of issues regarding how, where and when car batteries should be charged—and the resulting load on the power grid.

Electric utilities strive to avoid large fluctuations in the power supply and to keep the system’s frequency stable at 60 Hz. In this way, they maintain balance in supply and demand and... read more

Battelle has developed materials that can be used to create a supercapacitor with performance superior to that of commercially available devices.  The common measures of performance are the energy density (energy per kg) and power density (power per kg).  This technology is based on specific metal oxide compositions synthesized in conjunction with carbon nanotubes or activated carbon.  The performance of the supercapacitor can be tuned by altering the specific metal oxide... read more

This invention relates to materials that absorb and dissipate energy and/or selectively allow energy to be transmitted – in particular, polymeric materials that include polyol(s) such as polyethers, polyesters, polyether/esters, acrylics, plus other formulary components such as hydroxyl-terminated polybutadienes, polyisocyanates, silicone, RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) silicone, and  suitable catalysts. Included are such polymeric materials that are resilient and resist... read more

The transportation sector currently accounts for 70% of petroleum consumption and more than a third of green house gas emissions in the US. Studies have shown that  major reductions in GHG emissions can be accomplished by transitioning to battery powered automobiles. However, the large battery systems required could be problematic due to high cost in combination with limited specific energy, safety issues, as well as limited cycle and calendar life. 

A DC-to-DC converter takes a direct... read more

Small-scale low-voltage distribution systems, such as a microgrid, have many advantages to traditional AC distribution systems. Although AC-bus based systems can readily use the existing AC power grid technologies, grid issues including synchronization, reactive power control, and bus stability are inherited as well. DC-bus based systems can be a feasible solution because they are small, localized systems that cause the transmission loss to be negligible. Moreover, it does not need to consider... read more

One of the ongoing challenges to improving performance in capacitors and other high-voltage electrical structures is to identify and reduce the factors that cause failure.  High-voltage devices typically fail following excessive partial discharge activity, which is a localized dielectric breakdown that does not transcend the main electrode gap spacing. One type of failure is anticipated to start at a triple junction, the point at which an electrode and two different dielectric materials... read more

LLNL's technology is useful in fields such as power systems engineering, security monitoring, and vehicle tracking to identify, locate and monitor a particular source of electromagnetic radiation in a noisy broadband environment.  Conventional broadband filtering techniques are often inefficient in reducing unwanted electromagnetic noise, and this inefficiency results in higher energy and processing costs along with imprecise location, monitoring and tracking capabilities.  The... read more

Researchers at ORNL have developed an integrated system that reduces the total life-cycle cost of used fuel storage while improving overall safety. This multicanister approach provides superior assembly and burnup/damaged fuel capacity. The invention also reduces the need for future repackaging of fuel for transit or storage.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2010 International Energy Outlook, solar energy is expected to grow globally by 12.7% per year until 2035; more than any other renewable energy source. The growth of on-site DC (Direct Current) power in new and existing buildings has significant energy savings potential through the elimination of inverters necessary to convert DC source power into AC (Alternating Current) as well as the elimination of equipment normally used to... read more

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has developed materials growth and fabrication technology for the manufacture of high-speed, low power AlSb/InAs high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) that exhibit state-of-the-art low-power performance.

Superconductors having high critical temperatures (T_c), current densities (J_c), and upper magnetic fields (H_c2) are in great demand. The iron chalcogenides have been shown to have resistive onset critical temperatures on the order of 14K in the bulk and up to about 18K in thin-film form, with very high H_c2. These properties make them suitable for use in high-field applications, such as for magnets and conductors in magnetic fields, in addition to other superconducting applications such as... read more

Fluorinated precursors for superconducting ceramics typically increase the critical current in the superconductors they produce. Here the fluorinated precursors are obtained by combining salts of a rare earth, an alkaline earth, and copper in solution, spraying the solution onto a substrate, and heating the covered substrate in a fluorine-containing atmosphere. This is accomplished without the use of trifluoroacetates or physical deposition techniques. The method is suitable for producing... read more

 HTS based on the Y-Ba-Cu-O (YBCO) system (second generation, or 2G, materials) exhibit superior superconducting properties, when optimized, to so-called first generation (1G) materials such as Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-O (BiSCCO). However their sensitivity to oxygen stoichiometry makes them hard to optimize. In particular, YBCO performance is strongly dependent on grain boundaries, degrading when the grain boundary misalignment exceeds about 4° between grains. The result is that YBCO must be... read more

The electrical, chemical, mechanical, and optical properties of nanostructures depend on their physical dimensions and chemical compositions. Current methods of forming nanowires rely on knowing the average values for these parameters. As a result, there is poor control over local properties of the nanowires, which may vary from spot to spot in an uncontrolled fashion. By using knowledge of the size-dependent phase diagram, the inventors have developed methods of controlling the properties of... read more

Cuprate superconductors exhibit relatively high transition temperatures, but their unit cells are complex and large. Localizing a superconducting layer to a small thickness is difficult with bulk cuprates due to the challenges of growing layers with precise thicknesses. The inventive structures can be used to make superconducting field effect transistors (SuFETs), using the interfacial superconducting layer as the channel.

Superconductors are remarkable materials that transmit direct current without resistive loss and expel a magnetic field. So-called “high-temperature” superconductors exhibit these effects at temperatures above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, and so can be cooled relatively inexpensively. Unfortunately, these materials, many of them cuprates, require a high degree of crystalline order to perform optimally. One method of growing these crystals is to use fluorine-containing... read more