Two different groups recently claimed to have developed a room temperature superconductor. One has been patented, the other (which has gotten a lot more press attention) has not.
Neither of these claims has been verified, and many scientists are skeptical, but if either one is true and it can be manufactured for a reasonable price, it will have immense consequences.
Not the least of these will be its usefulness in a worldwide electrical grid allowing the whole planet to run on solar energy. Such a grid is already fully possible, but superconductive wires would make it even more attractive.
Unlike today's electrical wires, superconductors are 100% efficient. Today's wires lose a small amount of electricity due to their resistance to its flow, but the losses add up because the longer the wire the more is lost.
Superconductors have no resistance. Put 1,000 megawatt-hours in and get all 1,000 megawatt-hours out at the other end — no matter how long the wire is!
Superconductors already exist and are employed in devices like MRI machines, but these superconductors only work if kept really cold — hundreds of degrees below 0. This temperature would be hard and very expensive to maintain on long cables.
So a superconductor that works at room temperature would be really big news.
An obvious use of such a superconductor would be in transmitting electricity more efficiently for the long distances it will have to be sent if we are to rely entirely on solar energy.
Solar energy is highly intermittent at the local level. And in winter, days are short and the sun is at a bad angle above the horizon. The PV panels on my roof produce only one fifth as much monthly electricity mid-winter as they do in the summer, and there is no way we could store enough power to get us through the winter.
Long distance transmission will avoid the need to store immense quantities of energy for local use during winters, nighttime and bad weather.
The sun is always shining somewhere. Nighttime in America is daytime in Asia. When it is winter up here, it is summer south of the Equator, and vice versa.
Long distance transmission, up to and including a worldwide grid, will allow us to use solar energy produced 24/7 where current conditions are favorable (no pun intended!)
One advantage of solar power coupled with a worldwide grid is that it uses existing technology, unlike speculative proposals like hydrogen fusion, orbital solar, or "green" hydrogen.
A worldwide grid was impossible when Buckminster Fuller proposed it during the 1930s. But by 2015 technological progress had made it possible, as pointed out by Clark W. Gellings, a leading electrical engineer and grid expert, in the prestigious IEEE Spectrum.
Less than 10 years after Gellings' proposal, it appears that parts of the worldwide grid are already being built, although not by people intending to build such a grid. Instead, they are practical entrepreneurs taking advantage of opportunities created by new technology to build ever bigger grids.
The next step will be to connect all these grids together, producing the worldwide grid that total reliance on solar energy requires.
And all of this is happening even before room temperature superconductors have become available. The normal losses due to the wires' resistance are minimized by using high voltage direct current (HVDC). Although these losses are regrettable, they are economically acceptable.
If neither of the recently announced superconductors works out, it will be interesting to see how long it takes before someone finally cracks this problem. Meanwhile, the worldwide grid will continue to be built using existing technology.
But if a new superconductor works out, its 100% efficiency will make the worldwide grid even more of a no-brainer.
Gellings, incidentally, mentioned the possibility of using superconductive cables for key parts of the grid, as I did in an unpublished 1972 article.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published in 1981 and his most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon, and a number of other states. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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