East Coast outage?

Sat Aug 16 08:48:16 UTC 2003

Once upon a time, Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch at muada.com> said:
> Maybe a stupid question...
> 
> But what if the huge distribution systems used DC and the whole thing 
> was only converted to AC close to the users in small installations? 
> This would get rid of the frequency problems.

Basic physics.  To run DC at the power levels required, the "wire" would
have to be over 100 feet in diameter IIRC.  Look up the Edison vs. Tesla
power arguments for all kinds of information on AC vs. DC.

This is one of the problems that makes the room-temperature
superconductor a "holy grail" research area.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.