A.C Electricity …and why I hate it!

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2 Responses

  1. Don McCallum says:

    Methinks thou protesteth too much! I received a DC shock from a radio transmitter of about 800 volts and you may take my word for it that it hurt. Blew a quarter sized hole in my skin where the current exited. The real reason that AC won out over DC has to do with power distribution. Assuming for a moment that it is no more difficult to generate high voltage DC than AC Lets start for a moment with a 1 mega volt line voltage. From ohms law we can figure that the current for this line will be much lower for a given load than if we only generated 120 volts. For AC we need to use Z or impedance to correct for the reactive effects of L and C of the transmission line. Neglecting all other considerations, How do we step down the 1MV line voltage to something more safe to feed into the home. There is only one way and that is a resistive voltage divider, which would add a lot of additional load to the line. And consider what happens if the grounded resistor opens. With AC we use a transformer which is much more efficient than a resistive divider. Any excess L or C in the line can be nulled out using phasing caps or inductors. Anyway, that’s why the proponents of AC (notably George Westinghouse, who was Edison’s nemesis) won out over TA Edison. We all owe a great deal to the work of these men and their contemporaries around the world. But you make a valid point in that many of our appliances use DC internally and therefore could be used off the grid with a battery. We could sub in low voltage DC motors to our motor driven appliances and it would all work just fine. But now you’ve gotten yourself into the power generating business to charge the batteries which requires skills most people don’t possess regardless of the power generating method you favor. BTW I swapped out the fan motor in my pellet stove for a DC unit so I could still stay warm when the power goes out. So there are improvements that person practiced in the art can effect to make his power more user friendly.

  2. max says:

    That about the stupidest article i have ever read. Thomas Edisons Genius walked hand and hand with his stupidity. Unlike Tesla…. Edison cared more about $$$than mankind

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