Re: Wacky Weekend: NERC to relax power grid frequency strictures

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Jun 25, 2011, at 4:59 PM, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

> On Jun 25, 2011, at 4:47 PM, Andrew D Kirch wrote:
>
> > On 6/25/2011 7:43 PM, Paul Graydon wrote:
> > > Take a guess what the datacenter our equipment is currently hosted in uses.  Yet another reason to be glad of a 
> > > datacenter move that's coming up.
> > Why can't we just all use DC and be happy?
>
> motors don't produce DC?
They can.

> tesla vs edison?

Tesla was right, Edison was a better marketing person.

AC works better for long-distance transmission. AC could have been made much safer had we chosen a 2Khz+ frequency 
rather than a 60Hz
frequency.

> human safe dc voltage requires comically large conductors for the sorts of loads we energize?

So does human safe AC voltage. The key difference is that AC voltage is much easier to change efficiently 
(transformers) whereas DC-DC
voltage transitions require either an inverter (DC->AC->DC) inefficient and usually mechanical, a motor/generator set 
(inefficient and mechanical),
or a DC-DC converter circuit which tends to be horribly inefficient and expensive, especially at high amperage.

Owen