North American Network Operators Group
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Re: East Coast outage?

  • From: Iljitsch van Beijnum
  • Date: Sat Aug 16 06:11:21 2003 
On zaterdag, aug 16, 2003, at 10:48 Europe/Amsterdam, Chris Adams wrote:


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.



What are the "required levels"? There is a 600 MW DC sea cable between
Sweden and Germany with an outer diameter of about five inches (130 mm).