"Better" for WHAT?
Aluminum is significantly better conductivity per dollar and per pound.
Copper is better mainly when diameter is limited. This applies in some windings, and *may* apply in cables and conduits, though mainly "per dollar" (we could usually fit fatter wire but don't want the expense of bigger conduit).
Lithium is even better per pound.
Steel is often the best conductor, factoring cost and strength. My neighbor just put in 3 miles of steel conductors.
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That's something I have never seen done in the US. I don't see why it couldn't work, assuming the AL was larger. (Maybe with short runs, they were down to a minimum gauge, and switched to Al in the same size??)
As Pharos said, the issue with Aluminium (and steel) is the *connections*. Al house wire is the bane of older US homes. I do have Al for the big wire into my home because on $2500 of wire it is economic to budget $250 of time for careful termination (the company workers work slow). The three miles of steel next door is only 4 main connections and prep-work is a very minor cost. (Also 20,000V will burn-through rust.)
Aluminum wire was used in houses in the US for several years. It was very troublesome and unreliable and even started some fires.
Terminations for aluminum wire must be spring loaded. Otherwise they will work themselves loose.
If you buy a house with aluminum wire, you should rip it all out. Don't play whack-a-mole with switches and outlets. And don't hook copper wire to aluminum wire! It will work loose.
It's so dangerous and stupid. And it's so easy to make house wiring safe and reliable.
If you don't understand the wiring, leave it alone. "Two wires hook em up, three wires screw em up." Just hire a qualified electrician.
Up in Canada, when aluminium wire was common, it was sized at 12 instead of the 14 of copper which served to minimize the expansion/contraction of the joints so they didn't "work loose". Same rules apply like Fast Eddie D said though, can't connect copper to aluminum etc.
The connections would still get hot though, and now no one uses aluminium except utility companies for HV runs. Most insurance companies won't even touch a house that still has fuses let alone aluminium wiring or knob and tube any, either.
The connections would still get hot though, and now no one uses aluminium except utility companies for HV runs. Most insurance companies won't even touch a house that still has fuses let alone aluminium wiring or knob and tube any, either.
Aluminum has higher resistance than copper. That's the primary reason for bumping the size up. It also has a much higher coefficient of expansion than copper or steel. Engineers are supposed to know this, but I guess the engineers that decided to use aluminum for wire didn't.
Aluminum wire is a really bad idea.
And it's ironic that it takes a has-been like me with an expired education to point this out to "real" engineers. But don't mind me; I know nothing.
But aluminium is cheaper to buy and does not last as long as copper. Think about planned obsolescence and bigger profits.
Illogical technical decisions are not to be blamed on technical staff like engineers and technicians, but on manegerial, economics and financial staff.
It is always a question of increasing profits.
Think about the houses that caught fire. Think about the reliability of the installation.
We live in an era where quality isn't even a consideration for manufacturers any more. Look at the junk in the stores. It's designed to go right into the trash bin. Even Toyota is slipping.
I empathise Fast Eddie D on both counts; education and quality.
My education, though not to degree level, was hard fought for with an apprenticeship and years of night school and day release from work. I achieved Tech. Eng. level, but am now looked down on by many modern graduates, but they make it so plain in their conversation that there knowledge is not well grounded.
I made a square to a fag paper accuracy with files and emery paper, (1/2 thou. of an inch), and a set of tools, and then did three more years of building increasingly complexed electronic equipments, and college.
Going from that through tech college and on gives a very thorough and integrated understanding which just graduating does not.
Re quality, so much is 'cut to the bone', probably by accountants who seem to run everything these days. In about '75 I bought two pairs of sheepskin mittens from an Army and Navy surplus store. The stitching was poor, and I regarded it a tacking only, and ran my sewing machine over the seems with nylon thread, and I am still using them.
This tendency is everywhere, I buy new equipment and look at its weak points and immediately modify it as a preventative measure, often invalidating the guarantee, and my friends think I'm mad. There is hardly anything that I buy which is beyond criticism, and which I do not change to improve, even my ATC SCA2 and SPA2 amplifiers, though fairly minimally in these cases.
The ecology, (Gaia), will not put up with us just producing crap and filling the earth with redundant of useless rubbish two years old, just to make certain types rich.
My education, though not to degree level, was hard fought for with an apprenticeship and years of night school and day release from work. I achieved Tech. Eng. level, but am now looked down on by many modern graduates, but they make it so plain in their conversation that there knowledge is not well grounded.
I made a square to a fag paper accuracy with files and emery paper, (1/2 thou. of an inch), and a set of tools, and then did three more years of building increasingly complexed electronic equipments, and college.
Going from that through tech college and on gives a very thorough and integrated understanding which just graduating does not.
Re quality, so much is 'cut to the bone', probably by accountants who seem to run everything these days. In about '75 I bought two pairs of sheepskin mittens from an Army and Navy surplus store. The stitching was poor, and I regarded it a tacking only, and ran my sewing machine over the seems with nylon thread, and I am still using them.
This tendency is everywhere, I buy new equipment and look at its weak points and immediately modify it as a preventative measure, often invalidating the guarantee, and my friends think I'm mad. There is hardly anything that I buy which is beyond criticism, and which I do not change to improve, even my ATC SCA2 and SPA2 amplifiers, though fairly minimally in these cases.
The ecology, (Gaia), will not put up with us just producing crap and filling the earth with redundant of useless rubbish two years old, just to make certain types rich.
Aluminium wire has been used for many things, and has been used for the windings of generating equipment, built and designed by good engineers in some of the most prestigious engineering companies.
Some succeed, but I have seen a few failures.
Copper has a unique combination of attributes, its ductile nature and high tensile strength - or rather the lack of tensile strength in aluminium wire; seemed an obvious mode of failure for rotating windings, without additional support/bracing.
At that point, I guess the complexity of design increases and profitability disappears.
It is often a situation of making decisions in favour of gain and profit. Technical staff still know what is best to choose, but their directors and managers who issue orders, are not interested in making products that last, but rather, products that fail as a result of either planned obsolescence or of the choice of inferior materials and parts.
Regarding whether technical staff know and understand their fields of expertise, this has always been the same: there are those who take their studies seriously, and there are those who study to get a job without too much bother of understanding what they study down to details.
A couple of weeks ago, I heard a teacher saying millenials no longer take studies seriously. I mean, they do not bother to understand down to details as we used to do. For them, remembering facts is equivalent to learning. In my dictionary learning is much much more than recalling facts as it involves comprehending and linking details. The latter enable one to solve new problems and to be creative in one's field of expertise.
Regarding whether technical staff know and understand their fields of expertise, this has always been the same: there are those who take their studies seriously, and there are those who study to get a job without too much bother of understanding what they study down to details.
A couple of weeks ago, I heard a teacher saying millenials no longer take studies seriously. I mean, they do not bother to understand down to details as we used to do. For them, remembering facts is equivalent to learning. In my dictionary learning is much much more than recalling facts as it involves comprehending and linking details. The latter enable one to solve new problems and to be creative in one's field of expertise.
You're preaching to the choir.
Aluminum wire, in the correct application and engineered properly, is fine. But, when they blindly started to wire residences with aluminum, the only "engineering" they did was to bump a 15 amp circuit from 14 to 12 gauge wire, to address the obvious issue of voltage drop. Then all these problems popped up, and some of the "fixes" introduced new problems. Then all these replacement outlets and switches popped up and were on the market for decades.
In that application, it's the wire that needs to be replaced, period. I haven't seen aluminum residential wiring in any house for decades. By this time it's probably all been replaced.
Any savings on wire are more than offset by the special outlets and switches that are mandatory with aluminum wire. It's all lose and no win in this application.
For larger wire, like service wire, it can be cost effective to use aluminum wire. The service wire to my house is 0 gauge aluminum with a steel neutral wire. All the terminals are big spring loaded gizmos. I've lived here 20 years and haven't changed it, although I did change the service panel. I ran copper to the service panel so no spring loaded terminals needed.
I was taught how to be an electrician decades ago by a guy that really knew what was up. He paid me $20hr cash in 1994-1996 part time on the weekends. I learned a lot and have freelanced on and off ever since. I typically see residential wiring that has been horribly butchered. I am not allowed to use the words on this site that are required to explain what I see just inside the service panel . It amazes me that people that know squat will attempt to rewire a whole 60 year old house.
I had thought that it was actually the nature of academia which has changed from a deep understanding being the objective, including blue sky thinking, to that of installing facts in pupils.
There were always those who 'crammed' to get through the exams, and those with a deeper desire wanting to get to the bottom of things, and in a questioning way. It is not so much "details" which seem important to me, as a thorough comprehension of concepts and mechanisms which underly real scholarship, rather than a superficial 'gloss' of knowledge.
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