How To Send Energy Across a Continent.(Science and Technology)(use of superconducting power lines)

Byline: Michael D. Lemonick; Lemonick is senior writer at Climate Central.

Remember the Woodstock of physics? Probably not. Back in the spring of 1987, though, headlines were trumpeting it as the most exciting scientific meeting in history. Three thousand physicists crammed into a ballroom at the New York Hilton to talk about superconductivity--the transmission of electricity with literally zero resistance. The technology was suddenly within reach of being economical. So it appeared, anyway, and that could mean anything from superfast computers to tiny, powerful electric motors to power lines that could carry current with no loss of energy.

In the more than two decades since, superconductors haven't grabbed many headlines. That's partly because the new materials discovered in the late '80s proved to be a lot harder to work with than anyone expected, and partly because their energy-saving wizardry wasn't in high demand during most of the 1990s. But nowadays, using less energy is a key strategy in the fight against climate change--and a lot of the technical problems that have dogged superconductor technology have been solved. "Five years ago, I'd have been skeptical," says Robert Cava, a Princeton materials scientist who was in on the original Woodstock of Physics. "But after years and years and years of people beating their heads against the wall, they've finally got it."

"They" are scientists and engineers at a handful of companies in Europe, the U.S. and Japan who have figured out how to turn brittle, fragile superconductors into flexible wires. "We basically found a way to bend the unbendable," says Greg Yurek, who left the MIT faculty in the late 1980s to found American Superconductor in Massachusetts. Superconductors have found their way recently into ships, wind turbines and electric cars.

But the big push now is for power transmission. A major element of the "smart grid" is a new set of long-distance power lines to carry electricity from renewables ...