> >> No, we have AC because AC works better than DC in home wiring > >> situations. > > > > Hmmm. I always thought the reason we went with AC was because at the > > time, DC power couldn't cut it.
Hard to believe one has to explain this, but: You can send electricity far without losing much to resistive losses if you crank the voltage up. There are some HV DC lines actually used today, between major grids, IIRC. But AC, unlike DC, is readily convertible to different voltages via simple, passive transformers. So you send it at high voltage, down convert at the local substation, and down convert further at the pole pigs on your street. That's why AC won. The higher the AC frequency the more you lose to radiation --the US's 60 Hz broadcasts more than the UK's 50 Hz. Airplanes use 400 Hz, so they can save weight by using smaller transformers --the higher the freq, the smaller the transformer can be.
