I'm posting because of an article I read about conductive grease, like Noalox and Penetrox (both A and A13 types for aluminum and E for copper.

Silicone dielectric compound will not insulate, as the article implies, any more than Penetrox or Noalox will insulate. All of those greases produce about the same amount of electrical connection resistance. They all require squeezing the grease out of the way to make the connection. Where the grease has any visible thickness, the greases will all insulate.

I ran tests on plates and any corrosion still insulated aluminum plates with any of the pastes clamped. They all broke down and conducted at about the same pressure.

If you lay a thin layer of Noalox or Penetrox down on a clean flat plate without surface irregularities and push another flat clean plate against it, all of those greases insulate the plates. They all conduct at about the same pressure, and that pressure is where the grease leaves.

Since the results are all the same, and since zinc does react with some base metals and those compounds are so messy, I use dielectric grease.

As a matter of fact, we "accidentally" ran field tests in the CATV (cable television) industry on connectors. Installers were using a Teflon/silicone grease made by a company near Cleveland, Ohio. That stuff was expensive.

One of the owners got the bright idea to use Noalox on CATV fittings. We had chronic signal leakage and loss issues with Noalox fittings. As connectors were replaced, I had them switch to 100% pure GE silicone dielectric compound, and the problem went away.

So the article, while well intentioned, is not accurate. I know of ten's of thousands of critical low-pressure electrical connections using dielectric grease that have lasted 30 years or more outdoors (installed around 1980). At my own home, I have many dozens of connectors flooded with dielectric compound. Some of my connectors here are 15 years old (I installed the first in 1998).

On the other hand we had very short life with Noalox on aluminum trunk lines. I attributed that to the zinc reacting with the copper cladding on the aluminum center conductor and the aluminum shield. (We ran 24 volts AC on those lines, along with the CATV signals.)

When those connectors were cut off and replaced with connectors using pure dielectric grease, the problem never returned.