The most common traditional materials used in electrical energy distribution systems are copper and copper alloys.

Record prices for copper will not lead to large-scale use of cheaper alternatives by industrial consumers because copper retains clear technical advantages in wiring, French cable group Nexans (NEXS.PA: Quote) said on Wednesday. Benchmark copper prices CMCU3 on the London Metal Exchange breached the $10,000 mark for the first time last month after a rally driven by Chinese demand and tightening global supply. This has led some manufacturers and distributors to warn of a shift towards less expensive substitute materials like aluminium and zinc, while in France a surge in copper theft has led rail and power firms to consider alternatives. [ID:nLDE71E1Q1] [ID:nLDE6BF1HO] Nexans was increasingly using aluminium conductors and developing other alternatives but did not see a big shift away from copper, Chief Financial Officer Frederic Michelland said. "If you reasoned in purely financial terms, copper would have been abandoned a long while back in favour of aluminium," he told reporters at the group's head office. "Overall, copper still has a fundamental attractiveness that should last for some time to come." Substitution had remained limited in the past few years, representing between 450,000 and 600,000 tonnes annually compared with a global market of some 19 million tonnes of refined copper, Nexans executives said at a briefing on copper. Aluminium had claimed the largest share among copper substitutes and Nexans was notably developing use of copper-clad aluminium as a product that resolved some of the conductivity snags of aluminium. However, the cost advantage was not enormous and there were still technical drawbacks, Michelland said. "There is not yet a miracle (substitute) product," he said. Nexans, which supplies cables for sectors like energy, construction and construction, is one of the world's largest private consumers of copper, having used around 450,000 tonnes of the metal in 2010.

Le câble CELLFLEX(R) Lite ondulé en aluminium de RFS réalise un parcours sans faute exceptionnel, sans aucune réclamation ou aucun retour client depuis son lancement en 2006, prouvant clairement que les câbles en aluminium font jeu égal avec ceux en cuivre pour la longévité et la robustesse.

If all goes according to plan, TUM's Professor Udo Lindemann (not to be confused with Udo Dirkschneider, the diminutive frontman of German heavy metal bands Accept and U.D.O.) predicts that "the high-voltage on-board systems of most electric vehicles to be based on aluminum by 2020."

Since 2001 the price of copper has gone from less than $1 per pound to about $4 per pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange (CME). In response, looters and scavengers nationwide are stealing copper where they can. Within the last three years, copper thieves have disabled 130 cell tower sites across 17 jurisdictions in eastern Virginia and North Carolina. They stripped the wire from an airplane control tower in Ohio, endangering in-flight communications. They scuttled the irrigation system of Pinal County, Ariz., causing $10 million in damage and ruining a harvest. In Indianapolis, gutted refrigeration systems cost the state's largest food bank $400,000 in spoiled rations. In Jackson, Miss., thieves stole the copper from five storm sirens, which then failed to warn residents of an incoming tornado. In Kansas City, Mo., power outages due to stolen wire caused a credit union to freeze bank accounts, while a separate group allegedly used a backhoe to excavate 18,000 feet of backup power lines worth at least $500,000. In western Nevada, bandits on four-wheelers took out signal and control systems from Union Pacific (UNP) and Amtrak rail lines. In Minneapolis and Cincinnati, police say gangs use foreclosure lists like treasure maps, looting pipes from hundreds of homes, some of which exploded from gas leaks.

The electrical sector contributes the highest with 36 per cent, while the automotive and construction sectors share 22 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, an ICRA report said

Most importantly, replacement of steel and copper by aluminium in the automobile and power transmission sectors, respectively, is likely to support the aluminium demand.

Being a good conductor of electricity, aluminium has been gradually replacing copper in the power transmission sector. Given the same weight of the metal aluminium is twice as good in electrical conductivity when compared to copper.

Turning adversity on its tail and making it work to your advantage is what a rain chain is all about. The malleability and natural beauty of copper is used to throw up various combinations of a practically usable yet a beautiful object to match the architecture of a home. Copper rain chains are more known for their aesthetics than for their efficiency to transport water. These appear even more beautiful if you have a garden around the home. However, a rain chain on its own will not add any value, and instead will appear out of place for a simple building with no creative design in its appearance.

It's one of the first times the federal Clean Air Act has been used to prosecute air conditioner thieves in Georgia, but the case has given some local law enforcement agencies hope that the stiffer penalties do what new laws and declining copper prices have not - stop people from stealing copper.

The use of secondary raw materials can for example avoid 1.2 tons of additional carbon dioxide emissions per ton of copper produced. This equals emission savings of 41 percent compared to the so-called primary production.

Methods used to strengthen metals generally also cause a pronounced decrease in electrical conductivity, so that a tradeoff must be made between conductivity and mechanical strength. We synthesized pure copper samples with a high density of nanoscale growth twins. They showed a tensile strength about 10 times higher than that of conventional coarse-grained copper, while retaining an electrical conductivity comparable to that of pure copper. The ultrahigh strength originates from the effective blockage of dislocation motion by numerous coherent twin boundaries that possess an extremely low electrical resistivity, which is not the case for other types of grain boundaries.

3 March 2010—In a development that if independently confirmed could lead to an entirely new class of superconductors, a group of Japanese scientists—led by Professor Yoshihiro Kubozono of Okayama University—is reporting that a simple hydrocarbon, picene, exhibits superconductivity below 18 kelvin, a relatively high temperature. The Japanese team details its findings in this week’s issue of Nature

Systems and methods presented herein provide for elastic conductors. The elastic conductors may be configured with a primary that includes an elastic material and a conductive material. For example, the primary may have an elastic fiber, such as spandex, with a conductive material, such as a braided metal wire, wrapped thereabout. Alternatively, the primary may be configured from an elastic material with a conductive material, such as certain nanopartiuclates, embedded therein. The elastic conductors may be used in a variety of ways to form various types of cables. For example, the elastic conductors may be configured to form coaxial cables, USB cables, twisted pairs, etc. The elastic and flexible nature of the cables may make their uses advantageous in wiring environments that are subjected to strain or other harsh conditions. Moreover, the relatively light weight of the cables may make their uses more advantageous in transportation (e.g., aircraft, automobiles, etc.).

[0003] Mainly for reasons of saving weight, cables having a central conductor made of copper, a metal which is a very good conductor of electricity, are often replaced by cables in which the central conductor is made of aluminum that is covered in a layer of copper, with the copper layer constituting about 15% of the diameter of the cable while the aluminum thus occupies about 85% of the diameter of the cable.

Paul Murphy from Moog explains the concept of boosting copper density using segmented stator technology to Lee Teschler of MACHINE DESIGN. 6:34

Heretofore, joining large aluminum underground power cable to aluminum or copper power cable with compression connectors was not feasible because of premature failure of the connector joint under electrical current loading. Unlike the long andbulky compression connectors used on bare overhead power lines where space is not a premium, underground compression connectors must be short to keep manhole size small and to reduce the time required to insulate the joint with hand-wrapped tape or otherinsulating materials. Overhead line connectors receieve appreciable cooling from air currents whereas commonly used paper or plastic insulation restricts the cooling of underground cable joints. Metal particle-filled grease joint compounds used inoverhead line compression connectors are not used for underground cable for several reasons. First, its use is precluded because of the possiblity of migration of the compound into the paper or along the insulation resulting in voltage puncture of theinsulation from ionization. Secondly, joint compounds of grease do not offer much improvement over no compound because grease will move under pressure and therefore does not constrain relative movement of connector and conductor strands whereashardenable resins such as epoxy do.