| ??? 01/04/07 22:42 Read: times |
#130396 - Cu vs Al for transmission lines Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Richard Erlacher said:
That business of the Vout to Vin ratio on the power grid is an interesting thing. They've replaced the copper with aluminum in order to reduce the required number of poles, so the line losses should have gone up since the '70's when they did that. One suspects that they'd simply size-up the wire diameter to reduce line losses. One also suspects that the real reason for replacing Cu with Al is that the latter is much much cheaper! And around here, meth addicts aren't stealing aluminum wire to sell to recyclers so they can feed their habit. -a |
