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To: long-gone who wrote (36404)	7/3/1999 10:57:00 AM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116759

Richard, I doubt aluminum is going to be used in home wiring, it is extremely difficult to solder (the oxide formed, in essence sapphire, one of the best insulators, prevents good welding and soldering). It is still used in some long distance power transmission, I believe. Even in chips, they are finally replacing aluminum interconnects with copper. As for motors and winding, the transition will start with very large motors and power generators. Even when using cryogenic superconductors of the HTSC type, people believe that the increased energy conversion efficiency justifies the cost of cryogenic. AMSC has a program in place with the government to prove their THSC wires in such an application, I believe. However, as long as these applications will require cryogenic systems to maintain these motors and generators under the critical temperature of the SC, there will not be, IMHO, any widespread use of these systems. I believe that within 10 years or so, SC's with critical temperatures higher than ambient will become available, and then definitely, all these system will eventually use these new materials. The drive will not be just the savings due to higher energy conversion efficiencies, but the much reduced costs and weight involved with these new materials, relative to the quite dense copper. By the way, there is a misconception that SC are completely "lossless", that is correct when the current is a DC (a persistent current loop in an SC will take years to decay) current, but when passing an AC currents, there are losses, but these will still be a minimal fraction of the normal conductors IR^2 losses. Zeev