$100 A/mm^2$ class Bi-2223 tapes have recently become commercially available. Some important characteristics of the tapes, e .g. critical current, ac loss, characteristics at joint, fault current characteristics, are required for an application such as a power cable or a power transformer. In this paper they have been investigated experimentally. The results indicate that the self-field loss of the high current density tapes is not negligible, compared to resistive loss in a copper wire for the same currents. In a cable, the self-field loss for relatively large currents is much larger than the magnetization loss due to an external field. But in a transformer, the magnetization loss is dominant, compared to the self-field loss. Finally the fault current characteristics show that the high current density tapes are never safe from burn-out even for fault currents with a few cycles.