Effect of synchronous reactance and power factor on HTS synchronous machine design and performance

Synchronous reactance is an important parameter of synchronous rotating machine because it affects on the machine output capacity, voltage variation and steady-state stability. The superconducting synchronous rotating machine has very small synchronous reactance about 115 of the conventional synchronous machine. This reason comes from the fact that the superconducting rotating machine is air-cored structure. In this paper, it is estimated how much this synchronous reactance has influences on many design parameters of superconducting synchronous machine such as machine volume and weight, efficiency, voltage variation and so on. In the case of a synchronous motor, the power factor can be adjusted according to the excitation voltage. This paper also deals with the effects of power factor on the design parameters and the performance of a HTS (High-temperature Superconducting) synchronous motor. This kind of analysis was used to design 1 MW class HTS motor.