Superconductors Enter Commercial Utility Service
American Superconductor officially commissioned the world’s first high-temperature superconductor power-transmission cable system to be used in a commercial power grid. Superconductors can … conduct 150 times the electricity of similarly sized copper wires. However, because of technological difficulties, the commercial development of superconductor power-cable systems has been slow.
The system commissioned last week, part of the Long Island Power Authority’s grid and funded by the Department of Energy, consists of three cables operating at 138 kilovolts.
