Wires carrying twice the power show the future: The Grid Series

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Upgrading the grid for a net-zero world isn’t just a matter of building new infrastructure. Yes, miles of additional cables will be needed, as will more transformers, more substations and more engineers and technicians. But plenty of existing technology will also need to be updated. On the third episode of Zero’s grid series, TS Conductor founder Jason Huang discusses the material science breakthroughs that have enabled his company to create cables that have twice the conductivity of existing cables — and just as much strength.

Explore further:

Past episode with grid expert Sanjeet Sanghera about the global challenge of updating the grid
Past episode with Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson about the kinds of government interventions that can speed the march to electrification
Past episode with Bill Gates about the tech startup investment landscape

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Matthew Griffin, and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshatrati. This week, breakthroughs on the grid.
0:17.0	If you're caught up on the last few episodes of Zero, we've been talking about the grid,
0:22.0	how it so magically brings electricity into our homes, and what is going to take to update
0:28.1	and upgrade the grid as we electrify more and more of our world.
0:33.8	A good amount of the grid is visible. You've seen miles and miles of cables that bring you electricity,
0:40.3	more than 30 million miles actually. But there's a lot that you don't see. You don't see or hear
0:47.3	about the people whose labor and ideas make the grid better. So in our third episode, and for now,
0:54.7	final episode of the grid series,
0:57.0	we look at one such innovation.
0:59.4	What if, instead of rolling out new cables,
1:02.6	we gave the old ones a high-tech makeover.
1:06.0	I don't know if there's, I'm sure I'm missing something.
1:08.6	It just, it makes no sense to me that this is not bendable.
1:12.3	If you have a sharp edge here, it's going to snap.
1:16.1	Yes.
1:16.6	That had been the problem of the older generation product.
1:20.6	Yeah.
1:21.2	When you have the aluminum protecting the carbon core.
1:24.5	Yeah.
1:24.6	Now you can bend it.
1:26.3	It will yield, but you were not snap.
1:29.9	That's Jason Huang. He has a PhD in material science, and he's used that expertise
	...

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