I found that today's power lines are made from strands of aluminum wire for current with steel strands for reinforcement.

I wondered, why aren't power lines made of copper?

I found that aluminum only has 61% of the conductivity of copper.

I also found that the main reason power lines are made of aluminum is because it is lighter. Because power lines have to go between poles, copper would be too heavy. If copper can conduct better that aluminum, and you lose less electricity with wires underground, why not have only underground copper wires?

This is what I found:

"Such an undertaking would cost approximately $41 billion, nearly six times the net book value of the utilities' current distribution assets, and would require approximately 25 years to complete," the report states. Customers' rates would have to more than double to pay for the project, the commission' staff found.

It would be EXPENSIVE!

Even though it would be expensive, It would pay off in the future because of all of the power we would save and there would be no more trees falling on power lines and causing fires.

If we put all power lines underground how much would it cost to make all of the power lines copper?

copper - $2.78 per pound

aluminum - $0.84 per pound

We can see that aluminum is a lot cheaper that copper so If power lines were going to be made of copper, it would have to really pay off in order to be worth the huge price.

Just as a thought, if we could get copper easier it would bring the price down a lot. Mining asteroids could do that so maybe in the future, power lines will be made of copper.

I am going to try and test the conductivity of copper compared to aluminum some time soon so look for that in the future.