Cheaper powered rail

Powered rails are quite expensive when building large railways. I would really appreciate either a different crafting recipe for powered rails or a more generous number of rails for crafting.

A different recipe might use copper instead of gold, as copper is cheaper, naturally conductive (makes sense for redstone), and doesn't have too many uses currently. Alternatively, crafting powered rails could give a greater number of rails, perhaps 10 or 12 instead of 6.