I came across this story today, a good original article from what i can tell, telling about the implementation of a high temperature superconductor into the grid (over in Long Island). Now i could’ve sworn that my professors told me about another place that did this, but i can’t for the life of me find it, so I’ll assume that the article is right.

Using superconductors is of course nothing new. They are already implemented in MANY places outside the lab, like in MRI’s that use liquid nitrogen cooled coils to create magnetic fields. Also, although i guess that counts as “in the lab”, CERN has HUGE superconducting coils to create magnetic fields (see picture) that will bend particles in the monster of a particle accelerator. But as you can imagine, because you have to cool all these things using liquid nitrogen, it is not in widespread use, so I’m always happy to read about new applications like this.

We here at ReducedMass are no strangers to superconductors, only a few months back there were claims that there had been a breakthrough and a room temperature superconductor had been made! This would obviously revolutionize the whole field, because now you no longer need liquid nitrogen, so widespread use of superconductors becomes MUCH more feasible. However, as we showed, it was all a misunderstanding and although it was promising research, there was no room-temp superconductor made.

I’m very excited about the field though, it seems like every week i read an article about a new group of researchers that say they are getting closer and closer to understanding how high temperature superconductors work (there is no complete theory describing this phenomena), and once that happens, i would imagine the field will make huge strides towards the holy grail, a room temperature superconductor.