Transmission lines are not going to melt because physics. High voltage travels outside the conductor using the "skin effect" which is why high voltage lines are not insulated (as this would actually impede the flow of electrons on the skin of the wire).
Secondly, those wires are directly exposed to the air, and the marginal thermal buildup in the core of the wire (which again is nearly non-existant due to skin effect) gets quickly dissapated.
The issue would be with the oil-cooled transformers that convert the high voltage to lower voltages and vice-versa. This is where "meltdowns" happen. Usually with a bang.
what is the limit to the skin effect? we are talking putting a load completely out of this world as far as the designers are concerned. also i understand the transformers and such would blow first but i was more pointing out the sheer volume of current required to power those vehicles. if the skin effect gets strong enough would the electricity not be forced into the metal since it would be of less resistance?
You are correct, because we are dealing with alternating current, for a breif time of the duty cycle, the voltage Is insufficient to produce the skin effect. It's worthy of note that power=amps X volts so if your line is at 100kv at peak, and skin effect disappears at (guessing) 10kv, then 10% of the duty cycle is subject to 10% of the load. Which works out to about 1% of overall load actually travelling inside the conductor.
Granted there is a failure point, but without going down a math rabbit hole I will hazard a guess that it would take at least a 1000% load increase above normal to reach critical level.
This is just rough math, I'm sure there are published specs out there somewhere on the capacity of HV lines. It's Sunday and digging sounds like work.
My point being; the power producing stations and distribution substations will fail long before the transmission lines become an issue, since they operate at near-capacity routinely and could not even handle a 100% load increase.
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