A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments

Re:A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments by martinald on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @01:02PM (#36958841)

Hmm. Losses from HVDC transmission are on the order of 3% per 1000km, so I'm not sure how much of a big deal it'd be for that kind of use case. Your example would only save ~6% transmission losses. An improvement yes but not really a big deal, unless the cables were far cheaper to make than current HVDC cables (which I'm doubtful about).

I think there are other use cases within devices themselves that are far more interesting for energy storage.

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Re:A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments by declan_roberts on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @01:07PM (#36958903)

3% but keep in mind they can only push so much current through those wires before they start losing energy to heat, regardless of the voltage.

The same cable diameter can now power an entire state.

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Re:A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments by roywiggins on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @01:11PM (#36958972)

Superconductors have a critical field, you can't pump unlimited amounts of current through a superconductor.

(I think there were some comments going around that this material has quite a low critical field, so there would have to be some substantial improvements on this even if it is superconducting)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_field

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Re:A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments by AlexandrB on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @02:27PM (#36960237)

I remember going down the rabbit hole on superconductors a few years ago and finding out that they were limited by a critical field. It was both reassuring and disappointing and largely for the same reason - there's no truly "free lunch" in nature.

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Re:A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments by tills13 on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @02:20PM (#36960133)

ok but 3% when you're talking about MWs or GWs of power is still a lot of wasted energy.

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Re:A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments by slashdev on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @02:35PM (#36960364)

Not as much as is wasted in generation and transforming, both of which would benefit from superconductors.

The benefit might lie less in the wires and more in the equipment.

Tough to say with a trans Atlantic cable though. Those kinds of distances have never been tried to my knowledge.

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Re:A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments by AlexandrB on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @02:34PM (#36960353)

Whether it's worth doing also depends on how much energy it would take to make thousands of miles of superconducting cable of similar capacity and how long such a cable would last.

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