NeuPower was founded in Shanghai Zizhu National High-tech Zone in May, 2021 as a spin-off from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. NeuPower is a next-generation new energy company co-developed by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Zizhu Overseas High-level Talent Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center. The company has the world's leading high-temperature superconducting wind turbine generator technology and specializes in creating revolutionary high-temperature superconducting wind turbine generator products, particularly for offshore wind power applications. Recently, NeuPower has completed more than 10 million RMB angel round financing which led by CASSTAR and followed by Xiaomiao Langcheng. NeuPower will continue to expand its team using angel funding and build its first pilot production line to manufacture product modules. NeuPower has formed an overall layout with its headquarters located in Shanghai "Grand Neo Bay" and its manufacturing center located in Nantong National High-tech Zone.
Offshore wind power presents numerous advantages, such as abundant wind resources and proximity to power demand centers in developed coastal regions, making it a highly promising future energy source. Deep-sea areas, in particular, hold 80% of the Earth's wind energy potential, but the complex dynamic behavior of drivetrain systems under strong external forces in these environments poses new challenges for system vibration and fatigue resistance. The top priority for future offshore wind turbine generator development is to ensure the stable, highly reliable power generation from a single device over its 25-year life cycle, and at the same time reducing the cost of electricity. Therefore, the future development direction of offshore wind turbines is bound to be lightweight, large-scale and simple structure. NeuPower is committed to focusing on this niche market, will join hands with trusted upstream and downstream industry supply chain partners to create green and win-win ecology. Using reliable, efficient, and lightweight design concepts to accelerate the sustainable reduction of the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Through continuous technological innovation, the company aims to enhance its competitiveness by lowering both capital investment and operational expenses over the lifecycle of offshore wind farms, postponing wind energy as one of the most promising energy solutions and advancing the goal of carbon neutrality.
In recent years, the rapid development of global high-temperature superconducting industry supply chain makes it possible to integrate high-temperature superconducting technology and wind power generation sector which with a high demand for cost control. The global market for high-temperature superconducting material was quickly ignited by the successful closing of a round $1.8 billion financing by Commonwealth Fusion Systems（CFS) in Dec. 2021. The demand for high-temperature superconducting tapes from this company alone has exceeded 10,000km in the past two years. According to the incomplete statistics, the number of global start-ups of compact magnetic confinement-controlled fusion has exceeded eight，and the total financing amount has reached tens of billions RMB. Under the traction of such a huge demand, the global manufacturers of the second-generation high-temperature superconducting tapes had also undergone a huge transformation of the underlying strategic logic since 2022, from earlier more inclined to rely on a technical breakthrough to show strength to the era of monopoly competition in cost performance. In the past two years, in terms of performance, with the rapid development of technologies such as high-temperature superconducting materials applied to artificial pinning center and thickened superconducting film, the current-carrying performance of the mass-produced superconducting tapes has been improved by several times. In terms of output, many high-temperature superconducting tape manufacturers at home and abroad had announced production expansion from 2022 to 2023 and the output will reach more than 10 times the original. The following is the production figure of a high-temperature superconducting tape manufacturer in recent years.
From the global high-temperature superconducting tape industry supply chain, it can be seen that era of tape ￥300/kAm is close at hand, and the price per KAm will continue to fall. Compared with the permanent magnet direct drive and permanent magnet hybrid drive, this will make high-temperature superconducting direct drive gradually become comprehensive competitive in offshore wind power applications.
Dr. Zhen Huang, founder and CEO of NeuPower, graduated from the University of Cambridge, UK, and is a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, Shanghai Science and Technology Storage Expert, Shanghai Magnolia Special Expert, Shanghai Oriental Talents, etc. He is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has been working on high-temperature superconducting machine for over 12 years. During his doctoral study in Cambridge, he won 18 scholarships, including the full doctoral award, and participated in and helped Rolls-Royce build the world’s first prototype of fully high-temperature superconducting synchronous generator. In recent years, he has presided over 18 vertical and horizontal topics projects related to superconducting machines and magnets, and accumulated R&D funds is exceeding tens of millions RMB. NeuPower's team includes experts and scholars from leading global institutions such as the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College London, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and San Yat-sen University, as well as senior engineers. Additionally, executives from fortune 500 companies have joined full-time to help optimize internal operations, streamline management, and establish an efficient R&D system.
NeuPower is developing rapidly, looking for more like-minded scientists, engineers and practitioners from generators design, mechanical design, power electronics, applied superconductivity and other related fields to join NeuPower and work together to move forward. If you are interested, please contact: hr@neupower.com.
Investor opinion:
CASSTAR partner Lei Mi said:in the field of energy, high-temperature superconductor is a very important track. The application of high-temperature superconductor can reduce power transmission losses, increase magnet strength of generator, so this thus promotes the generator to the high-power, miniaturization direction of iteration. This is of great significance at a time when carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals are approaching and offshore wind capacity continues to grow. With the team's decades of basic research in the area of high-temperature superconducting generator and magnets, NeuPower aims to large capacity generator markets. The bottom module can support the full range of superconducting generator products from 5MW to 30MW, which is another key layout strategy of CASSTAR in the field of high-temperature superconducting applications.
Xiaomiao Langcheng partner Haizhong Yang said: It is an honor to participate in the investment of NeuPower which is a successful model jointly cultivated by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Zizhu High-tech Zone. The accelerated development of offshore wind power towards high power has spawned the pain points of large weight, large volume and difficult operation. The high-temperature superconductor independently by NeuPower takes into account the advantages of small size, high reliability and large cost reduction space, and is a trend-level product. As well as, NeuPower is a rare team in the industry to achieve product engineering closed-loop. Looking forward to the development prospects of NeuPower.
Carbon Neutrality with the Power of Magnetism
