Trent W. Buck wrote:
Andrew McGlashan wrote:
Don't forget the inefficiencies of transmitting power over power lines for ... there is plenty lost there too. If it wasn't for this problem, there wouldn't be AC power, it would all be DC. But even AC will see losses from transmission. The other day somebody told me that DC's lossiness is a solved problem now, but I can't remember what the keyword was.
Well DC or AC; ohmic losses are just I(rms)^2 .R so the higher the transmission voltage the lower the transmission losses.The advantage of AC originally (as Tesla realised), was that the technology of the day (transformers) allowed simple voltage conversion up and down.With modern solid state technology DC-DC conversion is much simpler and has the additional advantage that one needn't worry about the ratio of the AC wavelength to the length of the transmission line (essentially antennae losses); regards Rohan McLeod