Waukesha, Wis., Manufacturer Works on Super-Efficient Electrical
Equipment
Mark Savage
975 Words
6900 Characters
03/23/98
15:43
KRTBN Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Copyright (C) 1998 KRTBN Knight Ridder Tribune Business News; Source:
World Reporter (TM)
Mar. 23--A tiny group of engineers around the country is working on a
project to save energy, protect the environment and cut energy bills by
billions of dollars.
"That's billions with a 'b,'" said Shirish "Sam" Mehta, vice president
of technology and development at Waukesha Electric Systems Inc., where
he leads a team of 10 focusing on the plan.
Their goal is to build a high-temperature superconducting (HTS)
transformer to install and test at the Waukesha plant by 1999.
After four years of development, the group has entered its second
phase, building a prototype, with financial help from the federal
Department of Energy. Mehta estimates the total cost of the program at
$6 million. The government will pay half.
That could be an exceedingly small price to pay if the research and
manufacturing skills of the 30 or so team members pan out. In addition
* to Waukesha Electric's group, researchers at Intermagnetics General
Corp. and Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. in New York, and Oak Ridge
National Laboratory in Tennessee, are working on the HTS project. The
group also consults professors at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in
Troy, N.Y.
Mehta estimates that if the HTS transformer works as expected, it
could save utilities and manufacturing companies billions of dollars.
Wisconsin utilities alone could see savings of as much as $100 million
annually, he said.
Right now, transformers, although 99.3% efficient, are collectively
losing a lot of energy. HTS transformers would be 99.8% efficient, Mehta
said, and that added efficiency would compound the savings as more and
more of the new units were installed at utilities or industrial sites.
Mehta said standard transformers lose energy in the delivery process
and most of that in what the industry calls "load loss," when a
transformer is at full power.
However, new ceramic superconductors cut electrical resistance and
energy losses while operating at higher temperatures than previous
superconductor materials in past theoretical models. The older materials
had to be kept at temperatures as low as 4 to 8 degrees Kelvin. (Zero on
the Kelvin scale is equal to minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit.)HTS
transformers will operate at 20 to 35 degrees Kelvin. This is still low,
but less energy is required to cool the units to these temperatures, and
cooling costs are lower because liquid nitrogen can be used instead of
the more expensive liquid helium required by the lower-temperature
models.
There are advantages, too, over today's oil-cooled units, Mehta said.
Liquid nitrogen is more environmentally friendly than oil, which
creates disposal problems when a unit wears out. With HTS units, there
is also no danger of fire or leakage, Mehta said.
In addition, less wire is used in HTS units, helping make them lighter
and smaller. The reduced size, Mehta said, will make them particularly
attractive in urban areas.
Some users also may be able to reduce their number of transformers
because less backup should be needed, Mehta said. Traditionally, utility
substations have backup units to avoid overloading transformers.
Overloading can cause a traditional unit's life span to be cut in half,
even with just brief periods of overuse.
HTS units don't lose life span when overloaded. They simply require
more cooling, he said.
"This helps the world and the ecology. There are lots of pluses,"
Mehta said of HTS transformers.
From a business perspective, John Wagner, Waukesha Electric's
president and chief executive officer, sees benefits, too.
In addition to offering a better product, he said, the HTS
transformers will allow utilities and industry to provide more reliable
power at a time when uninterrupted power is vital to businesses and
homes due to the increased use of computers.
"If you're working on a computer, you can't have it go out," he said.
Still, Wagner believes sales of HTS units will build slowly when they
become available in about five years.
He expects 20% of the total market to be interested over the first
five years, and that amounts to about 200 units a year across the
nation.
"This is very much leading-edge technology," Wagner said, and "any
industrial sector wants a high degree of reliability."
He doubts few will swap all their old equipment for new. Instead,
industry will phase in the transformers to gauge how they work.
But slow, steady growth is normal in this field, Wagner said. Waukesha
Electric's business tends to grow as fast as the economy.
"We parallel GDP (gross domestic product), which has been climbing
about 2.5% to 3% a year," he said.
Waukesha Electric is the industry leader in medium-size transformers
with about 35% market share and annual sales of about $175 million. It
employs about 950 people, more than half in Waukesha and the remainder
at a second plant in Goldsboro, N.C., and at a remanufacturing unit in
Mount Vernon, Ill.
Before being purchased by General Signal Corp. in 1995, Waukesha
Electric was MagneTek Electric Inc. General Signal, based in Stamford,
Conn., has annual sales of about $2 billion.
"We're in the business of making money," said Mehta, noting that there
is great risk in taking on such an ambitious research project.
"No manufacturer would take this risk by itself," he said. Mehta said
that when the group reaches the third phase, building a commercial unit,
the majority of expenses will be industry-funded.
"There are a lot of hurdles to overcome yet," though, Mehta said. But
he points out that developments in the field have been moving ahead
quicker than anyone first expected. Mehta said that when talk first
began on HTS transformers in about 1990 he hoped he would see it come
about by the time he retired, in about 10 more years.
"But there are advances every week or month, and the pace has picked
up," Mehta said. "We are solving problems as fast as they come up."
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