|
New
Release -- Superconductor Week does not edit or endorse the following
news release:
Intermagnetics' SuperPower subsidiary announces progress
at Albany HTS cable project
Albany, NY, August 31, 2005:
Intermagnetics General Corporation’s (NASDAQ:
IMGC) Energy Technology subsidiary, SuperPower, Inc., announced today the
successful completion of installation and functional testing by the BOC Group of
the Cryogenic Refrigeration System (CRS) for its Albany High-Temperature
Superconducting (HTS) Cable Project. U. S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)
visited the cable site at the North Albany Service Center of Niagara Mohawk, a
National Grid Company, to view the progress made on this $26 million project,
that is receiving $13 million in funding through the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Superconductivity Partnerships with Industry (SPI) program. An
additional $6 million in funding comes from the New York State Energy Research
and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Glenn H. Epstein, chairman and chief executive officer of
Intermagnetics, said, “The successful completion of this program milestone
leads directly into the next program activity - installation of the 350 meters
of superconducting cable.”
“BOC’s cryogenic system, which meets the highest industry
level reliability requirements, has now been successfully tested and
commissioned at the utility site. The system is able to handle real events that
occur in live power grids, including fault current,” said Edward L. Garcia,
vice president PGS Ventures, BOC.
SuperPower’s president, Philip J. Pellegrino, noted that,
“The equipment and controls building, underground ductwork and termination
vaults, along with the CRS, are all substantially completed. The first phase of
the cable fabricated by Sumitomo Electric Industries has been shipped from
Osaka, Japan, and is expected to arrive at the cable site in Albany in
September. Installation will begin immediately on arrival.”
Senator Schumer said, “This technology has the potential to
fix our nation’s most critical energy challenges and reduce our dependence on
foreign oil. This is a win-win for the Capital Region. In addition to building
the infrastructure to provide more reliable, better-quality power to citizens
everywhere, the area is now a center for new energy technology and will continue
to grow.”
BOC (NYSE: BOX), one of the world’s largest industrial
gases providers, is providing the cryogenic refrigeration system, which will
cool the cable to the temperature required for superconductivity. BOC also will
remotely monitor the cable and cooling system from its Remote Operations Center
in Pennsylvania.
The Albany Cable Project will use 350 meters of
superconducting cable to link two Niagara Mohawk substations (Riverside and
Menands). The superconducting power line parallels a new 34.5 kV installation
that is being added by Niagara Mohawk to handle load growth. The first phase of
the project includes installation of a 320-meter and a 30-meter section of cable
fabricated with first-generation, or BSCCO, wire. The joining of these two
sections in an underground cable vault will be the world’s first demonstration
of a cable-to-cable joint. In the long cable installations typical of commercial
applications, it will be necessary to join separate sections of cable in this
way. Commissioning of this first-generation HTS cable system is expected to take
place in the spring of 2006.
After testing and operating this first-generation cable
system for about one year, the 30-meter section of BSCCO cable will be removed
and replaced with an identical length of cable fabricated from
second-generation, or YBCO, wire that is currently being fabricated by
SuperPower at its manufacturing facility in Schenectady, NY. Commissioning of
the second-generation HTS cable system is expected to take place in June 2007.
William F. Edwards, president of Niagara Mohawk, said, “In
light of the challenges faced by utilities to continue to adequately service
rising customer demand, this HTS cable technology promises to be a quite viable
new solution. Niagara Mohawk is pleased to be a part of this exciting project to
demonstrate the technology.”
Return to industry news
releases |
