Edison wins "current war"

What if we used DC instead of AC?
One thing might be local power generation...each city neighborhood or town having its own power plant (if I am not mistaken).
Any other changes?
 
You'd need ASB's to force us not to use AC since it's so much easier to transmit. Nevertheless:

No rural electrification, too expensive for every East Pineyville to have their own DC power station.

No TVA or Hoover Dam, since no cities nearby to consume the electricity. No Las Vegas later, since dam never built.

No nuclear power, how would you even locally consume a gigawatt unless you built it downtown in a major city.

No rural electricity == no air conditioning == much slower economic growth in the humid South and desert West

When rare earth magnets and photocells become available starting in the 1970s, rural customers finally start to electrify their homes using low voltage wind or solar.
 
You'd need ASB's to force us not to use AC since it's so much easier to transmit. Nevertheless:

No rural electrification, too expensive for every East Pineyville to have their own DC power station.

No TVA or Hoover Dam, since no cities nearby to consume the electricity. No Las Vegas later, since dam never built.

No nuclear power, how would you even locally consume a gigawatt unless you built it downtown in a major city.

No rural electricity == no air conditioning == much slower economic growth in the humid South and desert West

When rare earth magnets and photocells become available starting in the 1970s, rural customers finally start to electrify their homes using low voltage wind or solar.
"DBWI Edison did not irredeemably slow down technological progress by half a century?"
 
Actually, maybe Hoover dam anyway because irrigation for California, but no powerplant.

Iceboxes and roadside icehouses still a thing. Propane refrigerators also.

TV only in electrified cities. Battery-powered radio sets and record players are the main form of entertainment media everywhere else.
 
I believe that some other country then would adopt AC and spread it across une world, but a world where Direct Current is the norm seems positively... Rustic. I believe cities would be a lot more polluted, and climate change would start earlier.

Then again, it might lead to earlier research on wind and solar.
 
No nuclear power, how would you even locally consume a gigawatt unless you built it downtown in a major city.
Ironically (as my country at least is currently phasing out nuclear), we might actually be talking about introducing it right now, due to the energy needs of large computing centres in the 2020s.
 
Taking AC power and making it DC with 1900 tech is doable, the other way around not so much - need solid state for that. In any case the problem is power transmission from the generating station (whatever it is) to the consumer. If the ASBs give Edison room temperature superconductors, then DC power transmission over distances becomes a non-problem.
 
Taking AC power and making it DC with 1900 tech is doable, the other way around not so much - need solid state for that. In any case the problem is power transmission from the generating station (whatever it is) to the consumer. If the ASBs give Edison room temperature superconductors, then DC power transmission over distances becomes a non-problem.
Actually DC to AC is easy. Have a DC motor connected to an actual generator. Nice sine waves and everything, which is tough even with solid state.

Efficiency might not even be too awful. Bulky, though, as all heck.
 
DC current has actually lower losses when transmitted over wire - for example undersea power cables generally speaking transfer DC.

The problem is, that it's harder to generate and you cannot use simple transformers to change voltage. If you started designing power grid from scratch and had access to modern power semiconductors, you'd probably actually want to make it all DC.
 
Ok, if we are comparing low voltage DC to high voltage AC, then AC of course wins.

High voltage DC, however, has slightly better transfer efficiency than AC at the same effective voltage. Under some conditions, lets say the cable is surrounded by salt water, it has significantly better efficiency.

EDIT

The problem is, that if you transfer your power at something like 120 kV for efficiency, and then want to have 120 V at the socket, with AC you can drop a transformer somewhere near(ish) the house. DC-DC conversion used to be significantly more involved, although today most consumer devices have a semiconductor rectifier and a step-down converter to 5V or something. If your mains power was DC you could drop rectifier from your power supply.

EDIT 2

Yeah, you'd need to do 120 kV to 120 V DC conversion at the box and then 120 V to 12 V or something at the house. Today with switching step-down converters that would be actually _easier_ than using transformers. Early 1900s? Lolno.
 
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