Slashdot Mirror

At connections of productions units like offshore windmill parks the energy losses can be reduced by ~40% by use of RTD design HTS [high temperature superconductor -- jab] cables.

Good news: superconducting cables have been installed already in some cities. They are being promoted save limited space for buried cable, carry more power, reduce size of substations as well as reduce transmission losses. Check out http://www.supercables.com/ for more info. They have lots of good explanations of the benefits of superconducting cable and a video which shows parks and buildings springing up where substations and overhead transmission lines used to be. These cables look like they will become a piece of of energy future.

Clearly there are limitations and it seems like these cables are currently cost-effective only where there are benefits besides transmission efficiency, though this is certainly part of it. Likely the cost of materials and cooling makes superconducting cables too expensive for long distance transmission at current electric rates. There was a lot of hope for higher temperature superconductors in the late 1980s, perhaps the real-world use of these cables will stimulate further research and costs might drop with innovations.

Another way to reduce transmission losses is do do less transmission, by moving power generation closer to power consumers. Few people want more fossil fuel or nuclear plants located near their homes. (I remember sweeping fly ash from a large oil-fired plant across the street off the porch every spring when I was younger.) Roof-mounted solar would reduce transmission distances. It first needs to overcome some cost problems before it would be economical enough to be widespread and would always need to be part of a mix of other power sources and/or power storage systems.

TFA fails to see the big picture and that compatative cost is not the only value.

Heres how it could be made to work.

Liquid hydrogen is the coolant for superconducting wires for your power grid.
These reduce the energy lost between power plant and the home.
Seeing as you are pumping hydrogen around anyway... you may as well go into the distribution business.

A quick google found these links

http://www.supercables.com/News_and_links/press%20 releases/20010528_first_service.html

http://scientificamerican.com/print_version.cfm?ar ticleID=00003872-159C-1498-959C83414B7F0000

and

http://www.conectus.org/xxtechnology.html

Has some cool pictures

If copper becomes expensive, developing countries will just use aluminum. The biggest problem with aluminum wiring is joining it to copper; this is the only thing that really inhibited aluminum wiring in this country, where there was already a ton of copper wiring everywhere. Places starting from scratch won't have that problem so much. Long-distance transmission lines will likely be copper for a long time due to the lower resistance. (Gold, BTW, is a worse conductor than copper, and is quite comparable with aluminum. Silver is slightly better than copper, if you're willing to pay.) There will be more and more transmission lines being built with superconductors, though!

Of course, the incredible energy requirements of aluminum production yields its own set of headaches. But if we don't solve that problem, the wiring dilemma will be moot anyhow.

What the bleeping heck... the javascript on supercables.com checks to see if you're running Netscape version 4.x, and if not basically does the equivilant of <FRAMESET onLoad="document.location.href = document.location.href">

I'm not sure why you would want to send every browser except netscape 4.x into an in infinite redirect loop, and I'm not sure why IE doesn't fall for it, but it sure is some strange programming.

See URL http://www.supercables.com (follow the "news" link)