Energy and the grid · In service today
Transmission cable
In the ground under Shanghai, Essen and Long Island. Rare because of the cold.
The record behind transmission cable
A kilometer of superconducting cable under Essen · KITSuperconductors in transmission cable
A superconducting cable carries several times the power of a copper circuit through a fraction of the trench, at a voltage low enough to skip a transformation stage. In a dense city the expensive thing is the right of way rather than the conductor, and that arithmetic can work. Every installed example is under a city. The losses that vanish in the conductor reappear as a refrigeration bill, so the case is made by weighing that bill against the cost of digging.
What is stopping transmission cable
The cryostat is the product. A cable is a vacuum-jacketed pipe of liquid nitrogen with a superconductor inside it, buried, for kilometers, with refrigeration plant at intervals and no tolerance anywhere along its length for a warm spot. Utilities buy assets with forty-year lives and no moving parts. This one has a plant attached to it.
What a better material would change for transmission cable
The refrigeration is the whole argument, so anything that raises the operating temperature moves the economics directly. A conductor carrying the same current with a warmer coolant, or with less of it, turns a project that needs a special case into one that competes on price against copper and a bigger trench.
Conductors used in transmission cable
Near transmission cable, in energy and the grid
SuperMatics is a platform infrastructure company for superconducting devices: software that finds the material and the process, lab work that makes and measures it, and pilot manufacturing with industrial partners.If you are working on something in this field and a material is what stands in the way, tell us about it.