All year power supply with off-grid photovoltaic system and clean seasonal power storage

The objective of the project is an all-year secure supply of alternating current based on a solar energy island grid consisting of serial components and seasonal energy storage. Photovoltaic modules, inverters, electrolysers, batteries, hydrogen stores and fuel cells form the basis of the independent power supply system. For this, selected load profiles were analysed and evaluated in theory and practice.The analysis is based on the results of the test runs of the system and the simulations, in which the combined hydrogen-battery-system is compared to the battery system.It was revealed that it is sensible to complement an island grid operating on lead batteries for shortterm energy supply with hydrogen as a long-term store. This ensures a year-round supply security based on solar energy and the extension of the life span of the batteries required for hydrogen-based power stores. The systems based purely on batteries can not provide perfect supply security during long periods of low solar radiation since they do not possess energy stores which allow long-term energy storage.Hence a seasonal energy store, such as hydrogen, is required to guarantee reliable power supply for every day of the year.Autonomous power supply systems with long-term energy stores operate independently from the public grid system and can be implemented without elaborate intelligent energy management. For this, however, the costs of the serial components must be reduced and the efficiency of the system must be improved.     

Swelling of PMMA-structures in aqueous solutions and room temperature Ni-electroforming

 LIGA-structures are known to have a lateral dimensional precision of 1 μm and below. These specifications strongly depend on the process parameters. Fabrication of 400 μm tall nickel LIGA-structures by electroplating of X-ray patterned (DXRL) resist structures revealed much higher distortions. These are caused on the one hand by thermal expansion of the structured resist since the electroforming is usually performed at 52 °C, but on the other hand to a higher degree by swelling of the resist in the aqueous electroplating bath. Reducing the electrolyte temperature not only eliminates the thermal expansion but also particularly reduces the swelling. At room temperature the latter is reduced by a factor of 3 in comparison to the usual 52 °C-bath leading to an overall reduction of the deformation of up to 80%. In this paper the experimental data are presented and the results are explained. Furthermore first microstructures electroplated at room temperature with optimized precision are shown.     

Industrialization of LHC main quadrupole cold masses up to series production

Whereas the prototypes of the main quadrupoles had been pursued at CEA Saclay under contract with CERN, the contract to build all MQ magnets and the complete cold masses had been placed with ACCEL Instruments GmbH. After careful evaluation of design concepts and fabrication processes some revisions have been introduced to ease an industrial fabrication of the 400 MQ magnets and cold masses to be delivered to CERN. First batches of magnets were successfully cold tested. We report about the upgrading of the fabrication facility including the MQ specific layout of all machinery, the upgrading and qualifying of personnel resources and processes, the technical performance of the products and main activities and experiences on the way to series production.     

Fabrication of the pre-series wide aperture superconducting quadrupoles for the LHC insertions

Individually powered superconducting quadrupoles with a coil bore of 70 mm will be installed in the LHC insertions, in areas where increased geometrical acceptance and improved field quality are required. The quadrupoles feature a four-layer coil, designed on the basis of two graded 8.3 mm wide Rutherford-type NbTi cables. The magnets have a magnetic length of 3.4 m and a nominal gradient of 160 T/m at 4.5 K and 3610 A. A total of 26 quadrupoles are in production at ACCEL Instruments (Germany). In this report, we present the experience in fabrication of the pre-series magnets and the results of the initial qualification tests.     

Fabrication of LIGA mold inserts

 The present paper describes the fabrication sequence of a LIGA mold insert by electroforming after the patterning steps of the overall process. These tools are applied for large scale fabrication of microcomponents made by molding and embossing processes. The application of an intermediate layer system leads to optimized process performance and to a better surface quality of the mold insert. The plating processes are described and the materials properties, e.g. hardness, are used for the characterization of the recrystallization behavior of the electroformed nickel which yields the high temperature application limit of the tool. Received: 25 August 1997 /Accepted: 22 September 1997