Comment by londons_explore
1 day ago
PE doesn't work as well as you imagine. As well as needing waaaay more of it, due to the power of 2 in the volume of a cylinder formula, and it being much more expensive, it also can't withstand high temperatures, which means the current carrying capacity of the core is lowered.
> As well as needing waaaay more of it
Have you done an accounting of how many kilometers you can fit on a 200,000+ tonne boat? Seems to me you could cost-effectively carry nearly 20x as much cable weight as current cable layers. You need 25x the volume of polyethylene, but that's only 10x the weight and it isn't even counting the weight of the conductor.