Development of superconducting magnetic bearing for flywheel energy storage system

We have been developing a superconducting magnetic bearing (SMB) that has high temperature superconducting (HTS) coils and bulks for a flywheel energy storage system (FESS) that have an output capability of 300 kW and a storage capacity of 100 kW h (Nagashima et al., 2008, Hasegawa et al., 2015) [1,2]. The world largest-class FESS with a SMB has been completed and test operation has started. A CFRP flywheel rotor that had a diameter of 2 m and weight of 4000 kg had a capability to be rotated at a maximum speed of 6000 min−1. The SMB using superconducting material both for its rotor and stator is capable of supporting the flywheel that had the heavy weight and the high seed rotation mentioned above. This paper describes the design of the SMB and results of the cooling test of the SMB.