No.815
Assuming you understand electric motors enough, superconducting motors are much better for power applications. In industrial applications, electric motors are said to take up 80% of electricity used in factories, don't quote me on this I am just going off one statistic I have seen without future research into it. In this case, most of those motors are 3 phase induction motors, which dominate less than 1 HP - 1250 HP range of motors, those motors are on average 90% efficient to be nice to the reality of how much energy is lost in these motors. So if we take a 100 HP motors, and do our math, its takes 746 watts to produce 1 HP. At 90% efficiency, that means there is 10% of the energy lost to the environment So if the motor was drawing 74,600 watts (100 horsepower potential) of electricity, 90% of it is being used to create mechanical energy, would 67,140 watts would be put to use in moving the rotor, producing 90 horse power. This is to give you an idea of what happens to the motor when you lose energy, in reality, the 74,600 watts would be put to use to create the 100 HP of the drive rotor. The scenario I just gave you would be for a 90 HP motor. The 100 HP motor would draw around 82900 watts to produce 100 HP.
So what is the point of that whole explanation, well many consumers are paying for electricity they don't even use? What would be the solution to this problem? A fully superconducting motor. A superconducting motor is 100% efficient. The sad part is, they are only practical in a 500+ HP range in factories, ships, oil rigs ETC. The great part is they are more energy dense, so you can make them much smallers, with the required power, which will also make them much easier to move, and possibly work with.
An example of this in a real life situation would be if I spend 39,430 dollars a month for diesel so my oil rig can have power it needs to operate. I can save money if my motors are 100% efficient, I could use less diesel to do as much with that same output, or for the same amount of currently invested into the system, I can do a more with additional machinery on the rig at the same cost.
Another case would be If I own a factory, and have a three 850 HP induction motor, which is 634100 watts, or 634.1 KW in electrical energy. Motors at that high of power achieve 95.5% efficiency plus or minus 1 on average. In this case each of you motor will draws about 663.98 KW to achieve 850 horsepower. So to run the motor at the desired horsepower, you would need to consume 29.88 KW per each motor more than needed in a superconducting motor. For all three of those motors that 89.64 KW of energy you are not using but paying for. On average a factory would pay .035 USD a KWh in the U.S. Lets say these motors run for 200 hours, to be safe, a month in this factory. The company is wasting 627.48 USD a month on this motor, or 7530 dollars a year on the electricity of these motors. On Top of that, those aren't going to be the only motors in that factory. There is an army of motors smaller than that, that in sum consume more power than those motors on average, and some of them need to run all the time.
Most superconducting motors would not be induction motors though, they are likely to breach 1250 HP, and be built as Asynchronous motors. Currently the worlds biggest superconducting motors, one of the worlds biggest motors, is a 36.5 MW Asynchronous motor that is 49,000 HP. It is not fully superconducting, it is a hybrid motor. THe armature windings, rotor windings, are superconducting, but the stator, or non moving part of the motor magnets are copper wire windings. This motor is 98.5% efficient, and is on a navy ship, saving the U.S navy 50,000 dollars a year in energy costs. Now the thing is another 49,000 HP motor like the one built would only be 96.5% efficiency at best. A standard copper wound motor cannot breach this efficiency. Only partly superconducting motors can, fully superconducting motors will be 100% efficient in the electricity they use.