Serious Question About Silver vs Copper Conductivity for Power

@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.)

You are correct.  The OP is ignoring this for some reason.  I have made a great many power cords and know first hand how this thin, solid core conductor will become stressed and crack/ break over time. This is so simple to understand. 

There is a reason why the electrical code does not permit less than 18awg wires for detachable cords or permanent cords as well. It also requires the ground wire to be equal or larger than the supply wires unless the branch is protected by a suitable current limiting device, in this case, the one in the breaker box, not the equipment.

"This is where the insulation becomes more polarized over time by electrical flow."

polarization effect, caused by significant V/m electric field, does happen in DC powered wires, e.g. tube amp internal wiring. signals/power/speaker-conn are purely AC, thus polarization effect in dielectrics is not present. on other side aging of dielectrics does have an impact on dielectric constant and loss tangent, thus refreshing wires after 10+ years is good move to reduce signal/power losses.