The Fiber Age Meets The Power Grid

tulare writes: "According to this story at Wired, a research team is developing a way to replace the steel core inside high-capacity electrical power transmission lines with a fiberoptic core, which apparantly could provide a dual benefit: a 200% increase in emergency transmission capacity along with the ability to "carry several gigabits of data per second." (Per line?) There are a few kinks to work out - like how to splice the data in and out of the lines, but the story talks about an initial rollout date in 2003. Not soon enough to bail Californians out of the current crunch, but considering the benefits (less line sag, greater capacity without building new towers/routes), the effort certainly seems worthwhile." There's some more info from the researchers at this site as well.