World’s largest electric cable close to power, could light 1.4 million homes | A high voltage direct current cable will connect UK homes with fresh green energy from the wind farms of Denmark.::undefined
World’s largest electric cable close to power, could light 1.4 million homes | A high voltage direct current cable will connect UK homes with fresh green energy from the wind farms of Denmark.::undefined
Huh. I’ve just always heard that AC is the better way for long distances. TIL
AC is typically used for power grids because it’s very easy to change voltage with a transformer. You can have 100-200V in households, and use a cheap transformer to step up the voltage to 100+kV to reduce resistive losses for long distances.
AC works well, but there are technically some downsides with AC, like the skin effect and parasitic capacitance. With modern technology, it’s pretty easy to step up/down DC voltage, and by using it for the biggest, longest power lines, you see some nice power savings for the effort. It’s called “HVDC”.