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Admiral_Fancypants t1_ixd0v2z wrote

Reply to comment by jerzy4 in HVDC macrogrid would reduce climate pollutants and electricity costs while transmitting low-cost renewable power by manual_tranny

I just remeber hearing about Edison's terrible DC lines that couldn't go more than a couple miles before losing strength and needing to have substations to keep it going.

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glambx t1_ixd8xdx wrote

The issue was they didn't have semiconductors that could produce high voltage DC.

Transformers were easy to build, so achieving high voltage AC was a piece of cake.

At a given power level, line losses are inversely proportional to line voltage.

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jerzy4 t1_ixd39dd wrote

I do too. If I remember correctly hearing that his experiment was trying to balance and send out 110v across the wires only a few miles.

But if he produced high voltage and ran his wires over 100 miles he might have shown how the losses are indeed less than ac in the same setup. Our cable technology is very different from back then too

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