Assetcool - paint your power lines white...

[mikeselectricstuff]

Not sure about his one but their claim of "up to 34% reduction in Carbon emission"s eems optimistic to me.

https://www.assetcool.com/

My instinct is it's one of those things that may work in principle but may not be financially practical.
e.g. how long before dirt needs cleaning, cost of installation/application, and how the coating handles thermal cycling and movement from wind.

[PlainName]

how long before dirt needs cleaning

Just need to have a flock of pigeons with chamois feet.

[TimFox]

With that company's location, perhaps they could Sheffield-plate the conductors.

[Helio_Centra]

Not sure about his one but their claim of "up to 34% reduction in Carbon emissions" seems optimistic to me.

If anything it would be more carbon emissions because the paint needs to be produced and in itself is made of petroleum. Coating overhead lines has been looked at before but always came back as to expensive to merit the change.

As far as the white colour reflecting more sunlight: I dunno, bare metal is pretty reflective.

[JPortici]

Not sure about his one but their claim of "up to 34% reduction in Carbon emission"s eems optimistic to me.

0% carbon reduction still fits inside "up to 34%"

[switchabl]

As far as the white colour reflecting more sunlight: I dunno, bare metal is pretty reflective.

Some metals are at any rate (like silver and aluminium), unfortunately this goes hand in hand with a very low thermal emissivity. As a result, bare metal tends to get pretty hot in the sun. There has been some interest lately in paints that are not only highly reflective (in the visible spectrum) but also highly emissive (in the infrared "atmospheric window" around 10um). Those can actually cool objects below ambient temperature even in full sunlight.

This will generally not be possible with a power line that has significant self-heating from resistive losses. Still, a higher operating temperature will actually relax the requirements for effective radiative cooling somewhat (since thermal emission increases as T⁴). So, the basic principle is sound and it is definitely plausible that the coating can significantly lower the temperature of the wires.

Now, whether this is actually practical (in the face of dust, weather, aging etc) or economical, I have no idea. Their numbers are with 0 m/s wind and presumably the temperature difference would go down with some convective cooling courtesy of a light breeze in the mix. And a "34% reduction in carbon emissions" probably requires some creative interpretation/calculations. Notably, this particular claim doesn't seem to be in the PDF. Even at 20K-30K lower temperature, the power savings from a reduced resistance shouldn't be anywhere near that. I think the main advantage would really be in the higher (worst-case) current carrying capability.

[thm_w]

Cleaning could be done with little robots that run back and forth across the wires. But that would be super difficult as well. If the coating is compatible with a ceramic nano coating or has hydrophobic properties, it could be somewhat self cleaning?

Interesting how much the power capacity drops in the middle of the day.

https://www.assetcool.com/img/brochure.pdf

[BrianHG]

Cleaning could be done with little robots that run back and forth across the wires. But that would be super difficult as well. If the coating is compatible with a ceramic nano coating or has hydrophobic properties, it could be somewhat self cleaning?

Interesting how much the power capacity drops in the middle of the day.

https://www.assetcool.com/img/brochure.pdf

That chart looks cherry picked for the optimum...