{"id":176,"date":"2009-07-27T06:18:48","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T11:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog2\/?p=176"},"modified":"2014-04-12T11:38:55","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T16:38:55","slug":"why-do-we-use-alternating-current-ac-instead-of-direct-current-dc-in-power-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/176\/why-do-we-use-alternating-current-ac-instead-of-direct-current-dc-in-power-lines","title":{"rendered":"Why do we use Alternating Current (AC) instead of Direct Current (DC) in power lines?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The majority of today’s electronics either do or can run on DC current, and must be converted from AC, which comes out of wall-outlets, in order to run. In addition, DC is safer – according to IEC 60479, it takes about four times as much DC current to kill a man than AC current. So why do we use AC? There are three main reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. AC electricity loses less power over power lines<\/strong> than DC.<\/li>\n
  2. It’s easier to change the voltage of an AC current<\/strong>, and the higher the voltage, the less power is lost. This is why non-residential power lines are more dangerous than residential power lines: they have a much higher voltage to reduce power loss over long distances.<\/i><\/li>\n
  3. It’s easier to convert from AC to DC<\/strong> than the other way around. A DC power supply consists of a transformer, a capacitor, and a few diodes, all of which are cheap and non-mechanical (no moving parts). A non-mechanical DC-to-AC "inverter," however, is not so simple (which was doubly true before the invention of the transistor).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There are also historical reasons – see the War of Currents<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The majority of today’s electronics either do or can run on DC current, and must be converted from AC, which comes out of wall-outlets, in order to run. In addition, DC is safer – according to IEC 60479, it takes about four times as much DC current to kill a man than AC current. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blueraja.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}