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Originally Posted by whatmaycome14
Ok, this goes against everything I thought I knew. Wasn't the reason A/C caught on BECAUSE it was better to travel longer distances??
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That depends on just what you mean by "long distances". Miles, tens of miles, even up to a few hundred, A/C wins, especially at lower voltages. But IIRC long distance A/C transmission lines seldom run over 500 kV (at least as far as I remember, it's been a couple of decades since I worked in the field), while DC can easily go up to a megavolt or more.
There were also other reasons for the success of AC in distribution and small/medium scale transmission, most notably that transformers are pretty easy to build, so system voltages are easily stepped down from the 230-500 kV transmission lines, to 14.4 kV or so distribution systems, and then to the 110/220 volts used in residential systems.