[Pontiac]

The UK and Ireland are island grids. They do have undersea power interconnectors to Europe but these are non-synchronous DC links and transmit no grid inertia. There’s little prospect that this will change.

From my college days I remember learning that DC was not good at long distance transmission.

Yet, Britain and Ireland are transmitting DC across the Channel.

[JadeEmperor]

>> From my college days I remember learning that DC was not
>> good at long distance transmission.

>> Yet, Britain and Ireland are transmitting DC across the
>> Channel.

For overhead transmission lines, yes there are issues with DC such as corona discharge.

But for underwater transmission there is another huge issue which makes AC less practical - the large capacitance of the underdwater cable.

[catnipman]

“From my college days I remember learning that DC was not good at long distance transmission. Yet, Britain and Ireland are transmitting DC across the Channel.”

a couple of things about that claim make zero sense:

1. DC power was a dead-end back in the first days of the fight between DC and AC power because DC power plants essentially had to be built on every block due to distance limitations of transmitting DC power ... the power that lit the Chicago World’s Fair was AC power delivered from Niagara Falls ...

2. AC-to-DC conversion and then DC-to-AC conversion would be necessary for DC power to be injected into and then extracted form said DC link ... that would require MASSIVE motor-generators on each end of said DC link to do this. why not just transmit AC to start with?