Superconducting Potential

The specialized research into super-conductivity by physicists in hitech laboratories in the United States, Europe and Japan is setting the stage for bold advances which could result in great economic benefits for the region.
Scientists predict that within ten to twenty years they will have produced superconducting power lines to transmit electricity without loss of power. Even more important, they expect to develop a means to store electric energy indefinitely as a circulating current.
Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity without resistance. Until recently, achieving super¬conductivity required freezing materials to temperatures close to absolute zero (-494 degrees Fahrenheit). Starting with a series of advances in 1985, scientists have discovered materials that would become superconducting at higher temperatures. As a result, superfast computers and computer chips are now expected within the next five years. Other early applications of super¬conductivity will be in electronics and those functions for which no current need be carried, such as frictionless bearings that would float, suspended by magnetic levitation.
The main problem to be overcome in making the transmission and storage of electricity possible is that the super¬conducting material has to be able to carry a large quantity of electricity.
If superconductivity´s energy storage potential is realized, the countries of this hydro power rich region would finally have the means of utilizing the full economic potential of their resources. At present, electricity has to be used even as it is produced,  and the
 
only kind of storage feasible is holding back water in the few Himalayan power projects that have reservoirs.