Effects of stainless steel thickness and winding tension on electrical and thermal characteristics of metal insulation racetrack coils for 10-MW-class HTS wind generator

•The experimental results are on the electrical and thermal characteristics of HTS coils.•This paper deals with the effects of current ramp rate and current amplitude on the charging time.•The overcurrent tests are performed in the transient state to investigate the thermal stability of HTS coils.•The constraints of overcurrent tests are winding tension and SUS thickness.•The contact resistances are calculated and employed in the filed coil.•Charging time and thermal stability of three HTS FCs are investigated. Experimental results on the electrical and thermal characteristics of GdBCO racetrack coils co-wound with stainless steel (SS) tapes of various thicknesses and winding tensions are presented in this paper. The SS thickness and winding tension are identified as the factors affecting the charging time and thermal stability of metal insulation (MI) coils. To verify these characteristics, three types of MI-SS racetrack coils were fabricated with various SS thicknesses and winding tensions: 100-μm SS thickness and 10-kgf winding tension; 100-μm SS thickness and 5-kgf winding tension; and 50-μm SS thickness and 10-kgf winding tension. Further, three MI-SS racetrack coils were characterized by sudden discharging, charging, and overcurrent tests. The sudden discharging and charging tests were performed in a steady state to investigate the decay time constant of the center magnetic field discharging the coils and the delay time of the magnetic field charging the test coils, respectively. To estimate the thermal stability of the three MI-SS coils, overcurrent tests were conducted in a transient state at 1.1 times the critical current (Ic) and 1.05 Ic. Based on the experimental results of three small-scale test coils, the total contact resistance between the layers of the test coils was calculated and applied to design a field winding using a second-generation high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape for a 10-MW-class HTS generator used in an offshore wind turbine environment. Subsequently, an equivalent electrical circuit model was proposed to analyze the electromagnetic response and thermal stability characteristics of three HTS field coils of a 10-MW-class HTS generator with the key parameters of the HTS field coils, which were obtained using electromagnetic finite-element analysis. Finally, the charging delay time and thermal stability of the three HTS field coils were compared and analyzed in detail.