Site:           New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)
                Energy Conversion & Storage Department
                3-1-1 Higashi Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, 
                Tokyo 170, Japan
                http://www.nedo.go.jp/index-e.html
Date Visited:   3 June 1996
WTEC Attendees: M. Suenaga (report author), 
                R.D. Blaugher, 
                J. Daley, 
                G. Gamota, 
                D. Gubser, 
                D. Larbalestier, 
                R. Schwall, 
                R. Sokolowski, 
                J. Willis 
Hosts:          Shinichi Nakayama, Director General, 
                   Superconductivity Project Team
                Kimihiro Komatsu, Manager, 
                   Energy Conversion and Storage Department
                Kenichi Arai, Project leader, 
                   Applied Technology Development Department
                Masuharu Kazumori, Manager, 
                   Energy Conversion and Storage Department

BACKGROUND

The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) was established in 1980, immediately after the second oil crisis, as a semigovernmental organization under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) to promote technological development in Japan. NEDO is a unique organization in that it works to coordinate the funds, personnel, and technological strengths of both the public and private sectors. NEDO has an annual budget of nearly $2.5 billion (1995), $1.3 billion of which is expended for research and development of various technologies. As described below, NEDO has strongly supported applications of superconductivity for the electrical power utilities. Also, NEDO is a very strong supporter of the development of high temperature superconductors, as evidenced by its establishment of the International Superconductivity Technology Center (ISTEC). Of particular interest in this site visit was learning the details of NEDO's current programs, i.e., the areas of emphasis and the levels of funding, and especially of its future plans for superconductivity programs.

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY PROGRAMS

At the time of the WTEC team's visit, there were four programs on superconductivity at NEDO. Its two main programs are Superconductive Generator Equipment and Materials (Super-GM) and Superconducting Materials. The third, recently initiated, is Flywheel Energy Storage Systems. The fourth is on development of electronic applications of high T_c superconductors, which the team did not hear very much about, since this study focuses on power applications. Table NEDO.1 shows the budgets for these programs over a 10-year period, and Table NEDO.2 shows the manpower engaged in these programs in 1995.

Table NEDO.1
Budget for Superconductivity Projects, 1987-1996 (Unit: ¥100 Million)

Table NEDO.2
Manpower for Superconductivity Projects

Super-GM: Superconducting Generation Equipment and Materials (Generator, Conductor, Refrigeration, System)
FW Storage: High Temperature Superconducting Flywheel Energy Storage System
SC Materials: Superconducting Materials

The Super-GM project includes development of low and high T_c conductors and refrigeration systems in addition to its primary objective, construction of a 70 MVA generator. The Superconducting Materials program supports the activities at ISTEC. The details of the generator development (Super-GM at Kansai Electric Power Co.) and of the development of superconducting materials (ISTEC) programs are described in the site reports of the respective locations and will not be discussed further here. The fourth and most recently established project (1995) is a feasibility study on a flywheel energy storage system. A part of this program's goal is to construct a 10 kWh flywheel using the melt textured RE-123 for the magnetic bearings. NEDO managers believe that for a flywheel energy storage system to be economical it should have a capacity on the order of 10 MWh. However, this project was not described in detail at the WTEC briefing. (MITI also supports a program to study a superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) system for load leveling of electric power. This is funded through Chubu Electric Power Co. and the details of the program are described in the site report for that company.)

The budget amounts listed in Table NEDO.1 are those disbursed by NEDO to cover the cost of a project; however, it is well known that the companies contracted to do the project will spend a significant amount of their own funds to support the project. Also, for relatively small projects such as the conductor development projects, the funds are distributed as an incentive to the participating companies in the program, and the companies may bear a substantial fraction of the total cost. Thus, total project funding could be significantly greater than shown in the table.

The aims of the high T_c conductor development part of the Super-GM program for the near future are depicted in Table NEDO.3. It is interesting to note that only a relatively small amount of funding is provided in the budget for development of the conductors utilizing high T_c superconductors, even though a very important development, e.g., YBa₂Cu₃O₇-coated conductor tapes at Fujikura, Ltd., has come out of this funding.

Perhaps the most interesting issues for the WTEC team are the plans for the next few years, as Super-GM and ISTEC are near the end of their first ten-year phase. There appears to be strong agreement that ISTEC will continue for another ten years, but it is possible that the nature of the activities at ISTEC's Superconducting Research Laboratory (SRL) and its associated laboratories may change significantly, e.g., give more emphasis to conductor development than is currently the case.

Table NEDO.3
Future Directions for Wire Development

The future of Super-GM is less clear. There appear to be numerous possibilities for the next project. For example, Super-GM could be followed by another generator that is significantly larger in size (200-600 MVA) than the current unit (70 MVA). Another possibility is construction of a large (>1 GVA) power transmission cable utilizing high T_c superconductors. However, neither of these is likely to become reality for various budgetary and other reasons. Perhaps what may follow Super-GM will be a relatively small-scale conductor development program for a five-year period. To do this in a timely fashion, those involved in planning appear to be following a strategy of initiating a small program ($1-2 million) on conductor development starting as early as 1997 and bringing it up to a full-scale development program when Super-GM is completed. If this is to become reality, this project will likely emphasize ac applications and involve development of both low and high T_c ac conductors. At the time of this WTEC visit, it appeared that everything was in a very fluid state in regard to the next project in superconductivity, and it was not clear what would succeed Super-GM.

Besides these large projects in superconductivity, MITI in 1995 initiated a new program for NEDO to fund research at universities. In JFY 1995, the organization made 150 grants of approximately $1 million each, and it planned to continue at a level of 100 per year in the coming years. This is a totally new way of funding university research, which has been poorly supported in recent years. In the past, university researchers could only receive funds from the Ministry of Education, but starting in 1995, they can compete for funding from other sources such as this or from a similar program of the Science and Technology Agency (STA).