Two U.S. Navy warships will soon be protected from dangerous mines with the same technology that will be used to keep Chicago\u2019s power grid humming along.<\/p>\n
American Superconductor Corp., known largely for its wind-turbine systems, also sells wires able to carry much more electricity than standard copper wires now generally in use. The company has deals in place to deploy the technology in both the ships and the grid, starting in 2021, Chief Executive Officer Daniel McGahn said in an interview in New York.<\/p>\n
The superconducting wires will be used in a resiliency project by utility Exelon Corp. to jump added capacity among substations should one go down. The Navy will use the wires to help change the magnetic profiles of their two ships, potentially cloaking them from metal-seeking mines.<\/p>\n
The company is hoping the ship-protection technology will lead to future deals to install additional systems to manage ships\u2019 electrical systems, a strategy McGahn said would make the vessels comparable to utilities\u2019 power grids.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ship is a microcosm of the grid,\u201d McGahn said at Bloomberg News headquarters. \u201cIt\u2019s a great test-bed for our technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0anti-mine technology<\/a>, a technique called degaussing, dates back to World War II. The company\u2019s version is as much as 90% lighter than the systems currently in use, and needs about about half the electricity to work. The systems cost about $10 million a ship and are being installed in San Antonio-class vessels designed for transporting troops and equipment into war zones.<\/p>\n Modern mines have a variety of ways to detect ships, and changing the magnetic field won\u2019t counter all of them, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based research institute.<\/p>\n However, the new technology is going into vessels that cost more than $2 billion each, and its relatively cheap price tag makes it a \u201cgood investment\u201d for the Navy, he said.<\/p>\n McGahn has been expanding AMSC\u2019s offerings for utility grids and and ships, and eventually expects them to each generate about one-third of sales. \u201cWe think 2021 is going to be a very big year for us,\u201d McGahn said.<\/p>\n Two Navy warships will soon be protected from dangerous mines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":142716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[60005,60003],"class_list":["post-313291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-cloaking-device","tag-us-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313293,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313291\/revisions\/313293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: SAA to receive another bailout from government<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"