[60798] in North American Network Operators' Group

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Re: East Coast outage?

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris Adams)
Sat Aug 16 04:54:41 2003

Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 03:48:16 -0500
From: Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Mail-Followup-To: Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <41FB7350-CFC1-11D7-A068-00039388672E@muada.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu


Once upon a time, Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com> said:
> Maybe a stupid question...
> 
> But what if the huge distribution systems used DC and the whole thing 
> was only converted to AC close to the users in small installations? 
> This would get rid of the frequency problems.

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 is one of the problems that makes the room-temperature
superconductor a "holy grail" research area.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

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