SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND ELECTRIC-POWER - PROMISES, PROMISES ... PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

The long-awaited marriage of superconductivity with electric power has undergone a lengthy engagement to say the least. Whether those nuptia ls will indeed ever take place is a question we here dare answer, reco gnizing full well the pitfalls entailed. Almost immediately after its 1911 discovery, superconductivity was popularly touted as the key to t he lossless delivery of electricity...at least until the type I nature of these early materials was appreciated...a cycle of excitement and disillusionment that unfortunately has typified the field throughout i ts history. With the emergence and exploitation of Type II superconduc tors in the middle decades of the century, tremendous technical progre ss was made toward power application embodiments, resulting in operati ng prototypes of transmission cables and rotating machinery by the ear ly 1980s. Nonetheless, these achievements did not mature into commerci al power products, primarily because of economic and social factors th at had evolved by that time...successful conservation efforts had lowe red expected electricity load growth such that, ironically, the increm ental efficiencies offered by superconductivity were no longer require d at the cost involved...an important lesson in that the successful de ployment of a technology often rests on factors unforeseen and outside its internal development. The years from 1986 to the present have wit nessed the discovery of the copper oxide perovskite high temperature s uperconductors and their coming-of-age in practical wire form These ev ents, plus a renewed and growing world-wide demand for electric energy , give hope that the final vows will actually take place during the fi rst quarter of the coming century.