Differences between AC and DC power distribution and why you might chose one over the other. TLDR, AC is the most common choice for good reason, but there are a

Differences between AC and DC power distribution and why you might chose one over the other. TLDR, AC is the most common choice for good reason, but there are also conditions where DC would be the better choice: You may have heard something like "AC is better for power distribution than DC." I would not go so far as to call this a lie, AC is in fact "better" than DC in lots of common cases, probably the big two being that at some (but not all) voltages, AC transmission is more efficient than DC and the second being that AC can be stepped up and down in voltage very efficiently without electronics or anything else more complicated than several loops of varnished copper wire. Of course this is not true in 100% of cases. For example, at very high voltages (think 100s of thousands of volts) something called the skin effect can become so pronounced that DC becomes more efficient than AC. There's a high voltage DC power transfer backbone in Europe for this very reason. When you're dealing with multiple countries and potentially different standards for AC power distribution, this has the nice side effect of eliminating the need convert between frequencies and phases of AC. The other, and probably the biggest reason you would choose a DC power distribution system is because your power source is DC. Pretty much all power is generated the same way, from fossil fuels to hydroelectric and even nuclear power - you use energy to spin a turbine, and that circular motion is used to induce an alternating current. There's really only one way to get efficient DC power and that's solar panels. Depending on the use case, the losses of converting DC to AC (and often, rectified back to DC again for the end-use application) may not be worth it.