"bud--" wrote in message
.. .
Existential Angst wrote:

It's funny, we started with copper, went to tinned copper, went back to
copper, slid further back to effing aluminum (goodgawd), learned from
that mistake and went back to copper again. Altho power companies use
aluminum in parts of their service -- and steel!

As several people have said, steel is not used as a conductor.

Yeah, I just looked -- that guy wire I thought was steel indeed appears to
be alum!
--
EA


Aluminum is rather widely used inside buildings for larger sized wire. It
is very common to use aluminum wire for the service wires from the utility
connection to the meter to the service panel. The problems were with 15
and 20A branch circuits. Aluminum can still be used for them too, but not
likely any time soon.

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bud--