[someplaceguy]

> superconductivity is (by convention) less than 10^-11,

Ah, so you're saying that superconductivity is not actual zero resistance, but something close to it, and in fact only a factor of 1000x less resistive than the best conductor?

If that is so, this is something that I had previously thought would make a lot more sense to me.

But in that case it's not intuitive to me how SMES is possible with a 0% discharge rate. Shouldn't a significant fraction of the electrons looping around the coils be lost after many loops? (I know very little about electricity, as you can probably tell, never mind superconductors).

[mort96]

No, I believe it's literally zero but we don't have a measurement apparatus with infinite precision so we need some cut-off.

[fooker]

It's only literal zero for superconductors close to 0K temperature.

For high temperature superconductors (50-70+K), it's not literal zero for superconducting mechanisms discovered so far.

[someplaceguy]

Thanks, that makes sense.