East Coast outage?

Sun Aug 17 02:15:03 UTC 2003

Chris Adams wrote:

> 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 was under the assumption that the transmission line was at the same 
voltage as the end-user, because there were no good DC-DC voltage 
converters in that day.  And a few bazillion amps at 120V needs a really 
fat wire.

There's no significant wire size difference between a DC and AC line at 
the same ampacity.

Voltage conversion is the key.  _If_ you can do it, then transmission 
isn't a problem.