Not only that, but if you have two wires at a high potential difference on poles, you have to be careful to keep them separated, even under adverse conditions e.g. high winds.
Presumably, ensuring adequate clearance between a single wire and the ground is comparatively easier.
Explanation using my half forgotten physics course: Apparently they are using the overhead wire as waveguide, with high frequency, using only its capacitance, thus avoiding ohmic losses. There are losses only from dielectric polarization, which they claim to be much less than ohmic loss in standard transmission.
For some reason I thought they had found a way to do DC current over a single wire. This is a way to get AC transmission using latent capacitance in the line if I'm understanding correctly. Still very interesting, but not what I was expecting.
The biggest problem I see with this is that it will cause a lot of radio interference --- a long wire with that much power going through it at the frequencies they use will basically act like an antenna.
Chinese BYD has been trying for years to make an overhead wires free trolleybuses with this technology.
The main advantage is if you make it to operate high enough frequency, this should theoretically be safe to walk on, or at least safe to drive over.
Given that it will soon be 7th years since they first announced that, and there is nothing they offer on the market, there might have been some showstopper issue with it
With such high power, how can you do maintenance work on these systems? With two wire systems, it is at least possible to avoid ground and short circuits.
Excerpt: "It was experimentally proved that SWEPS has quasi-superconductivity property for
reactive capacitive current flow along the line even at high operation temperature of the electric conductor."
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 70.9 ms ] thread[1] http://ptp.irb.hr/upload/mape/solari/07_Dmitry_S_Strebkov_SI...
Presumably, ensuring adequate clearance between a single wire and the ground is comparatively easier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return#In_HV...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Mo...
http://amasci.com/tesla/tmistk.html
The biggest problem I see with this is that it will cause a lot of radio interference --- a long wire with that much power going through it at the frequencies they use will basically act like an antenna.
The currents induced in the waveguide itself will be dissipating the power.
This paper is close to 20 years old too. The (2018) in the title is wrong.
The main advantage is if you make it to operate high enough frequency, this should theoretically be safe to walk on, or at least safe to drive over.
Given that it will soon be 7th years since they first announced that, and there is nothing they offer on the market, there might have been some showstopper issue with it