North American Network Operators Group
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Re: East Coast outage?

  • From: Chris Lewis
  • Date: Sat Aug 16 22:13:33 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.