This is cool. New York city has installed some superconducting cables as a test for the US department of energy. I think superconductors are awesome and it's nice to see them actually being used as part of the power grid.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6428

Neat-o. Apart from the obvious practical advantages of superconductive fibres, it's good to see that they're tackling the problems with energy networks in some parts of the States. Correct me if I'm wrong, but outages are a relatively frequent problem in many states right? At least that's what an American acquintance once told me.

Love the idea of liquid nitrogen running beneath the ground.

hehe, yea, the liquid nitrogen thing is interesting. But to be fair, we do some pretty whacky engineering already and it works.

Regarding power outages, I think it's not that wide spread an issue. Obviously the east coast blew up a few years ago. Other than that, I think California has a lot of power problems due to the high population and the heat. Other than that, I haven't heard of much.

Personally, we've had a few intermittent power issues. usually do to local distribution equipment not being able to keep up with demand in the middle of summer. That hasn't really been a problem this year, though, so I think they fixed it.

Aight. Well, I guess some problems are unavoidable with regard to power supply when you're talking a country the size of the US, with huge distances between cities and towns.

Heck, Belgium is so small I could ride more than halfway on my bike on one good day, and shit still gets fucked up.