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0 pointszbrozek3y ago0 comments

While your house wiring is typically copper, transmission and distribution wiring isn't. That's very-often aluminum. And as you point out, we make a huge amount of the stuff.

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ben_w3y ago

20.6 MT copper/year vs 64 MT aluminium/year, even using both that's still equivalent to about 17 years of current global production (which is a big but not impossible change over the timescales desired), but the price is still painful.

zbrozekOP3y ago

Aluminum has higher specific conductivity than copper by mass. So if you think you need 1 MT of copper conductivity, you can do the job with 0.5 MT of aluminum.

Aluminum is also quite abundant. Rate limits will be political rather than production. That's not to say this is a realistic idea or that it's worth doing, just that it isn't unthinkable on a resource basis.

https://www.anixter.com/en_us/resources/literature/wire-wisd...

kortex3y ago

Aluminum production is also tightly coupled to electricity production, so cheaper power could lead to cheaper aluminum in a positive feedback loop.

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