Shocking!
The real reason for AC is to torture electrical engineering students.
This is all part of the windmill hype. The electric grid is the sustaining lifeblood of modern civilization, and these guys want to trash it for some kind of green steam punk vision. Don’t get me started.
Direct-current transmission is also better suited to handle the electricity produced by solar and wind farms, which starts out as direct current.
Um, solar sure. Wind farms (and pretty much all mainstream power sources) not so much, since they create energy by spinning an electromagnetic induction AC generator. So this part of the argument only works for solar, the most abysmally inefficient of all available sources. Hamsters on a treadmill are more efficient than solar.
Say what?
Methinks that something got lost in the translation.
I thought that was due to phones being relatively low power and all the central offices having battery backup.
The excerpt posted is so piss-poorly written that I won’t bother with the whole article.
The writer has no clue about electricity and nearly everything he/she said about what AC and DC is and does is wrong.
The reason AC was used is because you can step the voltage up and down as needed with transformers. You can’t do that with DC.
The reason you need to transmit power at high voltages is because power (watts) = Amps X Volts. If you double the voltage, you can get the same power with half the current (Amps). The reason this is important is because the higher the current, the higher the losses due to circuit resistance.
To simplify it greatly- you can use thinner wire to transmit the same power by simply increasing the voltage. High voltages in the hundreds of kilovolt range are stepped down by the use of transformers until they are stepped down to 220 and 110 volts for your household use.
You can’t do that with DC using transformers and so AC was adopted for the electric system.
Why reporters can’t just look it up before they write bullshtuff like this is beyond me.
It always reminds me of the time a TV news guy who was doing a report on a twin engine plane crash walks up to a mechanic working on a Cessna 172 or something like that and asked the mechanic “Will this plane fly safely on one engine?” to which the mechanic looked at the reporter with an “are-you-stupid” look and replied with much sarcasm in his voice “It flies best with one engine! It’s only GOT one engine!”
Reporters - it seems the only thing required of them nowadays is that they have an extreme left wing bias.
AC is bad. It can electrocute elephants and sh&*ts.
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