Alternating Current (AC) vs. Direct Current (DC)
Battle of the Currents
Almost every home and business is wired for AC. However, this was not an overnight decision. In the late 1880s, a variety of inventions across the United States and Europe led to a full-scale battle between alternating current and direct current distribution.
In 1886, Ganz Works, an electric company located in Budapest, electrified all of Rome with AC. Thomas Edison, on the other hand, had constructed 121 DC power stations in the United States by 1887. A turning point in the battle came when George Westinghouse, a famous industrialist from Pittsburgh, purchased Nikola Tesla’s patents for AC motors and transmission the next year.
AC vs. DC
In the late 1800s, DC could not be easily converted to high voltages. As a result, Edison proposed a system of small, local power plants that would power individual neighborhoods or city sections. Power was distributed using three wires from the power plant: +110 volts, 0 volts, and -110 volts. Lights and motors could be connected between either the +110V or 110V socket and 0V (neutral). 110V allowed for some voltage drop between the plant and the load (home, office, etc.).
Even though the voltage drop across the power lines was accounted for, power plants needed to be located within 1 mile of the end user. This limitation made power distribution in rural areas extremely difficult, if not impossible.
George Westinghouse (Image courtesy of pbs.org)
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Nikola Tesla (Image courtesy of wikipedia.org)
With Tesla’s patents, Westinghouse worked to perfect the AC distribution system. Transformers provided an inexpensive method to step up the voltage of AC to several thousand volts and back down to usable levels. At higher voltages, the same power could be transmitted at much lower current, which meant less power lost due to resistance in the wires. As a result, large power plants could be located many miles away and service a greater number of people and buildings.
Edison’s Smear Campaign
Over the next few years, Edison ran a campaign to highly discourage the use of AC in the United States, which included lobbying state legislatures and spreading disinformation about AC. Edison also directed several technicians to publicly electrocute animals with AC in an attempt to show that AC was more dangerous than DC. In attempt to display these dangers, Harold P. Brown and Arthur Kennelly, employees of Edison, designed the first electric chair for the state of New York using AC.
The Rise of AC
In 1891, the International Electro-Technical Exhibition was held in Frankfurt, Germany and displayed the first long distance transmission of three-phase AC, which powered lights and motors at the exhibition. Several representatives from what would become General Electric were present and were subsequently impressed by the display. The following year, General Electric formed and began to invest in AC technology.
Edward Dean Adams Power Plant at Niagara Falls, 1896 (Image courtesy of teslasociety.com)
Westinghouse won a contract in 1893 to build a hydroelectric dam to harness the power of Niagara falls and transmit AC to Buffalo, NY. The project was completed on November 16, 1896 and AC power began to power industries in Buffalo. This milestone marked the decline of DC in the United States. While Europe would adopt an AC standard of 220-240 volts at 50 Hz, the standard in North America would become 120 volts at 60 Hz.
High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC)
Swiss engineer René Thury used a series of motor-generators to create a high-voltage DC system in the 1880s, which could be used to transmit DC power over long distances. However, due to the high cost and maintenance of the Thury systems, HVDC was never adopted for almost a century.
With the invention of semiconductor electronics in the 1970s, economically transforming between AC and DC became possible. Specialized equipment could be used to generate high voltage DC power (some reaching 800 kV). Parts of Europe have begun to employ HVDC lines to electrically connect various countries.
HVDC lines experience less loss than equivalent AC lines over extremely long distances. Additionally, HVDC allows different AC systems (e.g. 50 Hz and 60 Hz) to be connected. Despite its advantages, HVDC systems are more costly and less reliable than the common AC systems.
In the end, Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse may have their wishes come true. AC and DC can coexist and each serve a purpose.
What was the War of the Currents?
In the late 19th century, three brilliant inventors, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, battled over which electricity system—direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC)–would become standard. During their bitter dispute, dubbed the War of the Currents, Edison championed the direct-current system, in which electrical current flows steadily in one direction, while Tesla and Westinghouse promoted the alternating-current system, in which the current’s flow constantly alternates.
The most famous of the three visionary men, Edison, developed the world’s first practical light bulb in the late 1870s, then began building a system for producing and distributing electricity so businesses and homes could use his new invention. He opened his first power plant, in New York City, in 1882. Two years later, Tesla, a young Serbian engineer, immigrated to America and went to work for Edison. Tesla helped improve Edison’s DC generators while also attempting to interest his boss in an AC motor he’d been developing; however, the Wizard of Menlo Park, a firm supporter of DC, claimed AC had no future. Tesla quit his job in 1885 and a few years later received a number of patents for his AC technology. In 1888, he sold his patents to industrialist George Westinghouse, whose Westinghouse Electric Company had quickly become an Edison competitor.
Feeling threatened by the rise of AC, which could be distributed over long distances much more economically than DC, Edison launched a propaganda campaign to discredit AC and convince the public it was dangerous. As part of this campaign, animals were publicly electrocuted with AC, and when New York State sought a more humane alternative to hanging its death-penalty prisoners, Edison, once an opponent of capital punishment, recommended alternating current-powered electrocution as the fastest, deadliest option. In 1890, convicted murderer William Kemmler became the first person to die in the electric chair. The apparatus, designed by an electricity salesman secretly on Edison’s payroll, was powered by a Westinghouse AC generator.
Ultimately, however, Edison failed in his efforts to discredit AC. Westinghouse won the contract to supply electricity to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago—beating out rival General Electric, which was formed in 1892 by a merger involving Edison’s company—and the expo became a dazzling showcase for Tesla’s AC system. Westinghouse also received an important contract to construct the AC generators for a hydro-electric power plant at Niagara Falls; in 1896, the plant started delivering electricity all the way to Buffalo, New York, 26 miles away. The achievement was regarded as the unofficial end to the War of the Currents, and AC became dominant in the electric power industry.
