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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 23, NO. 3, JUNE 2013

Inrush Current of Superconducting Transformer

G. Wojtasiewicz, G. Komarzyniec, T. Janowski, S. Kozak, J. Kozak, M. Majka, and B. Kondratowicz-Kucewicz

AbstractInrush current in superconducting transformers is

a little-known phenomenon. Because of its high values and long
time, it may lead to loss of superconductivity in transformers
windings. In the article, we present results of inrush current
measurements in two superconducting transformers of the same
power but different winding geometries. The results were confronted with inrush current registered for a transformer with
copper windings. The results suggest different parameters of inrush current for superconducting transformers as compared to
transformers with copper windings. This article is an introduction
to a series of studies on the phenomenon of superconducting
transformer inrush current.
Index TermsInrush current, superconducting transformer,
2G HTS tapes.

I. I NTRODUCTION

IGH VALUES of current may flow in a transformers

windings not only when the device is highly overloaded,
but also under certain circumstances while switching on the
transformer under no load to the power grid.
Transformer inrush current to the grid introduces higher harmonics, generates over-voltages and causes resonance phenomena [1]. Inrush current may damage windings and transformers
isolation as result of forces brought about by this current
[2], [3]. In superconducting transformers inrush current may
cause lost of superconductivity in windings and consequently
prevents engagement of the transformer to the network.
Surge inrush current of unloaded transformers with copper
windings may be up to 40 times greater than rated current. That
is for duration of several periods for transformers with powers
of below 100 kVA, up to several thousands period for huge
devices. Just to compare: short-circuit current may be 25 times
higher than rated current and it is switched off by over-current
protections in tens of milliseconds.
Amplitude, duration and degree of distortion of inrush current depend on the transformers construction and magnetic
properties of its core, on the other hand are determined by the
initial conditions, while switching the transformer into the grid:
instantaneous value voltage and cores magnetization [4].
The time course of inrush current can be estimated basing
on the magnetization characteristic = f (I0 ), where is the
magnetic flux in the iron yoke and I0 the current through the

Manuscript received October 2, 2012; accepted December 10, 2012. Date

of publication December 20, 2012; date of current version January 29, 2013.
This work was supported by the Polish Department of Science under Grant
N510526439.
G. Wojtasiewicz, S. Kozak, J. Kozak, M. Majka, and B. KondratowiczKucewicz are with the Electrotechnical Institute, 04-703 Warsaw, Poland
(e-mail: g.wojtasiewicz@iel.waw.pl; s.kozak@iel.waw.pl; j.kozak@iel.waw.pl;
m.majka@iel.waw.pl; b.kondratowicz-kucewicz@iel.waw.pl).
G. Komarzyniec and T. Janowski are with the Lublin University
of Technology, 20-618 Lublin, Poland (e-mail: g.komarzyniec@pollub.pl;
t.janowski@pollub.pl).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2012.2234498

Fig. 1.

Equivalent circuit of the transformer under no load.

primary coil. For equivalent circuit diagram of a transformer

during power on with no load connected to the secondary
winding (Fig. 1) we can write
(1)
u1 =U1 m sin(t + )
t
t
=m sin(t + ) m sin( )e T r e T (2)
where
L
circuit time constant,
R1
X
phase shift between voltage and flux;
= arctg
R1

(3)
(4)

and U1 m peak value of applied primary voltage; phase

angle of voltage u1 at time zero when the transformer is
switched on; m peak value of magnetic flux in the iron yoke.
The disturbance component of the idle current is the component that disappears with the time constant T , dependent on
relation L /R1 . Current suppression phenomenon is caused by
energy disperse at windings resistance R1 . When resistance is
R1 = 0 the phenomena of aperiodic flux component suppression will not appear and the surge current value will be constant
in time.
The current will reach its greatest value when while switching on the transformer the voltage will equal zero ( = 0) and
a positive value of remanent flux
M = 2m + r

(5)

For = /2 the flux amplitude will be minimal

M = m + r

(6)

As soon as magnetic flux density in the core exceeds saturation,

and this is usually the case for (5), a steep increase of current
versus flux occurs due to the non-linear magnetization characteristics of the core.
In engineering practice the interesting aspect is the maximal
surge current value which is estimated from the following

1051-8223/$31.00 2012 IEEE

WOJTASIEWICZ et al.: INRUSH CURRENT OF SUPERCONDUCTING TRANSFORMER

Fig. 2.

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Core size RZC-70/230-70 (dimensions in mm).

relation [5]
IM

U1 m
=
2f N 2 0 A
h

Bs
Br

2+
Bm
Bm


(7)

where U1 m peak value of applied primary voltage;

f frequency; N number of turns; Across sectional
area of the winding; hwinding height; Br remanent flux
density of the transformer core; Bs saturation flux density of
the core material; Bm peak value of rated flux density.

Fig. 3. Dimensions of the HTS transformer: HVprimary winding,

LVsecondary windings.

II. E XAMINED T RANSFORMERS

For construction of magnetic circuit of a HTS transformer a
wound and cut core RZC-70/230-70 (Fig. 2) the power 8.8 kVA
was used, constructed of sheet metal PN ET52-27, containing
3% grain-oriented silicon and sheet thickness of 27 mm. The
saturation flux density Bs = 1.7 T at H = 10 A/cm and core
losses P = 0.8 W/kg at B = 1 T.
Primary and secondary windings were constructed with superconducting tape Super Power SCS4050 of critical current
115 A in temperature 77 K and self field. The tapes thickness
was 0.1 mm and its width was 4 mm. The structure of tape is as
follows: 20 m copper stabilizer, 2 m silver overlayer, 1 m
(RE)BCOHTS, 1 m buffer stack, 50 m hastelloy, 20 m
copper stabilizer. The windings isolation was done with kapton.
The transformer has got two primary windings (Fig. 3). By
switching the HV2 winding into the energy grid we obtain
the transformer (TrHTS2) with air gap = 10 mm between
primary and secondary windings. Transformer without any gap
(TrHTS1) is obtained by switching the HV1 winding into the
energy grid. In order to cool down the windings was used a
cryostat with warm bore (Fig. 5).
For comparison, on the same core a copper windings transformer was constructed (TrCu) with windings in a profile 2.0
4.0 mm mm (Fig. 5). Transformers parameters are compared
in Table I.

Fig. 4. Cryostat and primary and secondary windings.

Fig. 5. Dimensions of the transformer with Cu windings.

IV. T HE E XPERIMENT S R ESULTS

III. E XPERIMENTAL S ET-U P
The measurements registration was done with data acquisition card National Instruments USB-6212 using application
written with LabVIEW. The inrush current was registered indirectly by measuring voltage drop at shunt of 60 A, 60 mV and
accuracy class 0.5. Transformers were switched on by thyristor
system that realized the switching on at the moment of voltage
crossing zero. The diagram of the measuring system shown in
Fig. 6.

The experiment was executed at the worst conditions of

transformer switching into the energy grid when the voltage
crossing zero. First of all inrush current waveform of conventional transformer TrCu were registered and then the superconducting transformers TrHTS1 and TrHTS2.
Registered waveforms of inrush current in transformers TrCu
and TrHTS1 are presented in Fig. 7. In Figs. 8 and 9 inrush
current waveforms at selected moments of time are presented.
Fig. 8 shows the most interesting first peak current. In case

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 23, NO. 3, JUNE 2013

TABLE I
T RANSFORMERS S PECIFICATION

Fig. 6. Measuring system.

Fig. 7. Inrush current of transformer TrHTS1 and TrCu.

Fig. 8. First pulse inrush current of transformer TrHTS1, TrHTS2 and TrCu.

of transformer with copper windings TrCu the maximal measured inrush current was 164 A. The maximal measured inrush current of TrHTS1 transformer was 178 A and TrHTS2
transformer was 167 A. Compared to conventional transformer
the superconducting transformers inrush current is greater
of 8.5% and 1.8% respectively. In both cases the first surge

Fig. 9. Inrush current peaks after time 0.18 s of transformer TrHTS1, TrHTS2
and TrCu.

of current exceeds by over 1,45 times the critical current of

the superconducting tape used for making the windings. The
second surge occurring after 0.02 s[ is comparable to the critical
current value and the third surge after 0.04 s is below the critical
current value.

WOJTASIEWICZ et al.: INRUSH CURRENT OF SUPERCONDUCTING TRANSFORMER

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TABLE II
M EASUREMENT DATA

After 0.04 s time the suppression of current effect still

occurs even though the windings are in a superconducting state
(R1 0). This suppression can be explained by the presence
of resistance in the parameters of the power grid and configuration of the measuring circuit includes a shunt in the supply
circuit of superconducting transformer. The superconducting
transformers examined have greater times of the inrush current
stabilization to the level of the idle current as compared to
conventional transformers. The TrCu transformer reaches the
idle current 1 A after about 200 ms, that is after 10 periods of
supply voltage. The inrush current of the TrHTS1 transformer
drops to the value of the idle current 3.1 A after about 350
ms that is after 18 periods of the supply voltage, and as for
TrHTS2 transformer the case is the level of 3.2 A reached
after 400 ms, that is 20 supply voltage periods. As compared
to the conventional transformer the time of the inrush current
disappearance is greater of 75% and 100% respectively. The
measured data is presented in Table II.

[6], [7]. The current damping effect is maintained after the

recovery of the superconducting coil [8], [9]. After the recovery
of superconductivity decisive role in the suppression of the current play grid parameters. They decide about the time needed
for the magnetizing current to settle. In this experiment at the
same parameters of the supply grid the twice as long time of
settling current was noted for the superconducting transformer
as compared to a transformer with copper windings.
If the inrush current of huge conventional transformers may
reach up to over dozen thousands periods, we should assume
that with huge superconducting transformers this value might
be tens of thousands of periods.
The formula (7) practically used in engineering for calculating the inrush current value results in huge differences between
calculated and measured values even in conventional transformers. The differences go further in case of superconducting
transformers. This is due to the fact that formula (7) does not include the number of parameters of the transformer and the power system which influence the value of the switching current.

V. C ALCULATED C URRENT
The formula (7) practically gives the sufficient accuracy
for big transformers switched into the grid of stiff voltage.
With transformers of over a dozen kVA the values calculated
from this formula may be 30% greater than the correct ones.
Calculated from the formula (7) by ignoring remanent flux
density, the maximal inrush current values for transformers
TrCu, TrHTS1 and TrHTS2 are presented in Table II.
The current value calculated for the conventional transformer
exceeds the measured value by 60%.
With the superconducting transformers the differences are
even greater. For the TrHTS1 transformer the calculated value
is greater than the measured by 120% and for the TrHTS2
transformer the difference is 70%.
VI. S UMMARY
The experiment presented here showed that superconducting transformer of power 8.5 kVA has slightly greater values
of inrush current than an 8.5 kVA transformer with copper
windings. This is connected to inrush current suppression in
superconducting windings caused by resistance growth after
exceeding the critical value of the superconductor by current

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