alt Hacker NewsThat seems like it's within striking distance of competitive, no? You get some major advantages in size and production automation. Perhaps it's ok for it to die sooner if you can get it built now and then replace it later.
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PunchyHamster • today at 12:39 AM
well aside from being effectively 20 times more expensive over entire operation...
DC switches (as in, just a power switch) are vastly more expensive because while in AC you have 100 breaks in current a second, DC is constant so it is far harder to break. So even if you had device that could use both (not hard with SMPS, they have rectification as first step), it's still essentially " replace everything".
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Or, alternatively, you switch to DC to get more current capacity over existing wires. (At a given voltage, a wire can generally carry more DC current because it doesn't have the same "skin effect" that AC has.) Even if the hardware at the substation is more expensive, it might be cheaper than upgrading the transmission lines.