Serious Question About Silver vs Copper Conductivity for Power

@guakus ,

I don’t know if a difference in sound can be heard, from say a power amp, whether the conductors of a power cord are copper or silver. (Interconnects and speaker cables, are a different story.)

Things that can make a difference in a power cord:

The wire gauge used for the conductors.

Solid core or stranded wire conductors.

Geometry, how the cable is made.

Shielding.... Can be good and can be bad. Depends on the application, the equipment it is used to feed.

The type and quality of the connectors used.

As for the speed of current through a conductor, in a circuit. It’s travel is very slow. As slow as molasses.

You may find these exchanges of some interest.

kijanki

4,284 posts

06-07-2022 at 07:27pm

2x200W amp might take from mains close to 1kW during peaks. The problem is that peak supply current won’t be expected 8A, but rather close to 40A. It is because current is drawn only for very short time (millisecond pulse) at the peak of full wave rectified sinewave. It applies to most of LPS. Power delivered with such short pulses not only creates larger voltage drops in house wiring, but also heat-up amp’s power transformer, that has to be oversized (higher copper losses and higher core losses for eddy currents and hysteresis).

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/329443/current-through-the-smoothing-capacitor-in-bridge-rectifier

jea48

3,875 posts

06-07-2022 at 08:04pm

 

@kijanki

+1

 

Please explain what happens if the power transformer’s secondary winding voltage is lower feeding the rectifier, due to a quick AC mains VD event, and the electrolytic capacitors voltage is higher. Just going from memory the rectifier will not conduct and the caps do not get recharged for that "(millisecond pulse)" in time.

 

Jim

kijanki

4,284 posts

06-07-2022 at 08:46pm

@jea48 You are right - there will be no current thru rectifiers until capacitor voltage will drop below rectifier supplied peak voltage. Theoretically it is possible to build LPS where capacitors keep average instead of peak voltage, but it requires huge inductor in series (in order of Henries) made with thick wire and AFAIK nobody is doing it. One problem is lower rail voltage (average instead of peak) while the other is dependency on the load current.

http://www.r-type.org/articles/art-144.htm

 Circuit wire gauge size matters.

.

@guakus ,

The power cable's geometry will be a total of 20 strands of 28awg solid silver, each 20 separately insulated in Teflon.  All braided into a hyper-litz geometry. 7 will go to hot, 7 to neutral and 6 to ground. 

Are you building, making, fabricating, this cable?

Teflon insulation should not be solely the insulation used to insulated power line conductors from one another. Example, insulate the hot conductor from the neutral conductor and safety equipment grounding conductor. You can use Teflon for each parallel run of the hot and the neutral paralleled conductors but you will need to use a rubber or equal covering over each paralleled group of conductors.

As for the EGC, (Equipment Grounding Conductors), it's a safety ground. It does nothing for sound. Just use an insulated stranded copper conductor.

As for the individual 28 gauge solid silver wires. For AC power, jmho, that is too small. I would think the wire gauge would have to be at least 16awg.... Maybe 18awg. 

Here is a Web Link to a wire combination calculator.

https://www.wirebarn.com/Combined-Wire-Gauge-Calculator_ep_42.html

Note: 7 , 28awg conductors in parallel only equals 20awg.

7~ 18awg = 10awg

5~ 18awg = 11awg.

@guakus said:

I gave the company my system’s specifications before the cable was built. The cable is rated for 100w at 15 amps.

100W / 120V = 0.83 amp.

1800W / 120V = 15 amps

Maximum ampacity for 20awg copper wire = 1.5A  (Power transmission line)

https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

@guakus said:

The cable is supposed to be rated for 100 W on a 15 amp wall socket.

That’s a horse of a different color than this statement.

I gave the company my system’s specifications before the cable was built. The cable is rated for 100W at 15 amps.

Maximum ampacity for 20awg copper wire = 1.5A (Power transmission line)

150W / 120V = 1.25A

What is the danger you feel will occur? A fire?

Fire if you connect it to a bigger load than the wire is rated for...

@rumi said:

Silver indeed easily breaks, mechanically, especially if it’s solid. For power cords, that can be a fire hazard. And intermittent power supply due to broken cable strands is probably not what you want.

And that’s a big elephant in the room imo... I could care less how the power cord will sound in the OP’s system.

The PC’s, (power cord’s) weakest link is the 7 small solid core silver insulated #28awg wires that make up the Hot and Neutral conductors and the safety equipment ground conductor of the PC. Any flexing of the cable, especially at the power connectors can and more than likely with the passage of time will cause breakage of the small #28awg wires.

There is not a recognized electrical safety testing laboratory in the World that would approve the use of the PC mentioned in this thread.

The PC is 2 meters long. The only insulating protection it has between the Hot and neutral conductors and the Hot and Safety equipment grounding conductor is the Teflon covering each single strand 28awg silver wire. No reputable PC manufacturer does that. Usually a PVC jacket covers the each grouped Hot, grouped Neutral, an grouped ground conductors.

If for any reason there is an electrical fault, the danger increases the farther the electrical fault is from the AC power plug.

Two types of possible electrical faults.

1) A Hot to Neutral short circuit fault, and or a Hot to safety ground fault. Either one of these will rely on the branch circuit breaker in the electrical panel to trip open. Many audiophiles think a breaker will immediately trip if the current in the circuit exceeds the breaker handle rating. Example, 15A breaker will trip if 15A passes thru it. 20 amp breaker 20 amps... That’s not true. For a bolted Hot to Neutral short or a bolted hot to ground fault the initial instantaneous current flow though the breaker can well be over 100 amps before the breaker trips.

2) Parallel and series arcing of conductors. Neither of these will cause a standard breaker to trip open. Arcing where a sufficient load is connected to the circuit creates sparks. Electrical sparks dropping on a combustible material can cause a fire.

Only an AFCI, (Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter), type circuit breaker will trip the breaker open when it senses arcing.

Circuit Breaker Myths. ( Article is old but still holds true to this day.)

introduction the myths basic breaker operation and design

The first (and most common) misconception is that a breaker
trips when its nameplate rating is exceeded. One fire text has stated (in correctly) that a circuit breaker will trip in several minutes with a small increase in current over its rating [1] . Actually, a 20 amp breaker must trip at a sustained current of 27 amperes (135 percent) at less than one hour, and at 40 amperes (200 percent of wire rating) in less than 120 seconds—far different from what the cited text implies.

These two trip points (135 percent and 200 percent) are
defined in NEMA Standard AB-1, MCCBs and Molded Case Switch-
es[2] . TABLE 1 lists the 200 percent allowable trip times for different
size (amperage) circuit breakers. MCCBs have characteristic ‘curves’
published by their respective manufacturers. A sample of such a curve
appears in FIGURE 1.

/ / / / / / / / /

CAFCI breaker (article is from 2010. Many improvements made to the breaker since then.)

@guakus said:

I have already run this by ACTUAL electrical engineers who build and repair houses for a living and both have confirmed what I already knew.

I think you mean Electricians. Electrical Engineers are not usually also Licensed Electricians. There is a difference between the two.

@guakus said:

Your equation has to change when you introduce insulation,

The temperature ampacity rating of the wire may change, but not the conductivity of the wire.

.

@guakus Said:

@jea48 How does running 20amps through a 15amp plug apply here? That’s patently ridiculous. I am not running anything that pulls 20 amps.

I suggest you reread what I posted. Not what you are implying I said.

I said:

If for any reason there is an electrical fault, the danger increases the farther the electrical fault is from the AC power plug.

Two types of possible electrical faults.

@guakus said:

Temperature impacts the conductivity of wire.

Yes it does. But not for the good... It can change the ampacity rating of a conductor. Different types of insulating materials used only allows the wire to heat up more increasing its ampacity rating of the conductor. Not its conductivity.

Goggle Voltage Drop formula.

Look at the equation. Note, no where in the formula is insulation mentioned.

Heat can cause more resistance in a circuit. Is that a good thing?

https://learnabout-electronics.org/Resistors/resistors_01a.php

.