| Some potential applications for disruption: Sub-sea cables that are the size of current fiber-optic bundles, which can transmit terawatts of energy with minimal/no losses. The bottom of the ocean is, ironically, at much higher pressure than atmosphere and would actually help increase the tolerances for superconductivity. This means: areas that have abundant power resources can export it with minimal infrastructure costs. Installing the transmission lines in this manner would be orders of magnitude cheaper than current high voltage DC transmission, and could likely bridge entire continents together. The #1 hold back on offshore wind is getting the energy from the farm to the onshore landing point. The energy loss and step-up/step-down transformers, with maintenance on those in kind, can be 30-40% of the project cost. You can also eliminate expensive and inefficient transformers on both ends since you can leave the voltage at generation-levels vs stepping it up to hundreds of thousands of volts in order to transmit it, which adds a lot of complexity. Under-utilized Hydroelectric capacity in northern Quebec could power Southern US states. The carry on from this in terms of the reduction in required infrastructure for power transmission and delivery is massive. Think of all the copper and aluminum required today to build huge transformers, step up and step down electricity, and get it from the generation plants to your home or business. You could effectively power an entire household on a cable the size of a fishing line compared to cables the size of a sharpie. The same applies to electronics - if there is a way to use this superconductor in transistors and microchips - the heat loss from operation could be reduced to nil, meaning you can have a chip with little/no thermal loss while operating. This eliminates the need for expensive cooling (again, typically copper or aluminum) and also all the complexity/cost associated with that. The power consumption of these chips is typically a result of the electricity losses as the current is driven into the chip at low voltage. Less thermal waste means much higher efficiency chips, which means less power required to operate them, which means much less consumption (and battery required to supply it). Mobile phones built with superconducting components and chips could last weeks on a standard battery since almost all the power consumption would be the radio, speakers and the screen. Since the superconducting temperature claimed by the initial team (127 °C) is much higher than most ambient temperatures, this means the potential applications are essentially anywhere outside of a heat source. Batteries and battery packs could be miniaturized to some extent - reducing transmission losses and eliminating heat on low voltage power means you can reduce the amount of copper required in a battery pack, and inside the battery itself, by a significant margin. This leads to lighter batteries out of the gate. Coupled with lighter cables to carry the power and lighter/cooler electronics to manage and distribute that power and manage the heat - the weight savings could be very significant. The potential for miniaturization and displacement of heavy/expensive/bulky traditional conductors is very large and not possible to understate. |