"I had heard that tunnels were a good first step for rolling out super conducting cables, but that doesn’t seem to be a thing."

Yeah tunnels underground would be better for superconducting cables, but it is indeed not really a thing as the cooling and installing and maintainance would be waaaay more expensive, than just using higher voltage. Or if one really cares about the loss, use direct current - but we are talking aber very small distances here.

If superconducting would be easy, we likely just would have fusion plants everywhere with no need for transporting electricity long distances.

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ferfumarma 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Or if one really cares about the loss, use direct current

I thought direct current had higher transmission losses vs AC

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tallowen 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

AC has higher losses over a transmission wire because of the changing magnetic field that it induces which creates losses.

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HPsquared 2 days ago | parent [-]

There's a cool effect where if you hold a fluorescent tube under a high voltage power line, capacitive coupling from the varying electric field causes it to light up. Some energy is continually leaking out via this route, the tube just reveals it. (Magnetic induction too)

https://youtu.be/0D50Dcvzkr4

	▲	afandian a day ago \| parent [-]
		You can feel it yourself if you have a piece of metal, like a bike.

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teo_zero 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tesla vs. Edison is back! :)

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LargoLasskhyfv 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Not if it's really high direct current, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

Problem is they need these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter , for these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter_station which are expensive. So it depends on circumstances, how and when its economically feasible to use HVDC, or not.