| ▲ | cogman10 an hour ago | |
> the cables are quite expensive, harder to repair and somewhat fragile Nope, HVDC uses the same style of cable as AC. I'm not sure why you'd think they'd be different. The HVDC cables that can be expensive are meant to be submerged. A feat that only HVDC can do. HVAC can't be submerged due to the capacative effect. But otherwise I agree. It's more a pipedream for me that HVDC becomes more common place as I believe it'd make grids ultimately more stable and resilient. | ||
| ▲ | jacquesm an hour ago | parent [-] | |
Hm, yes, you are right, I must have been reading on submerged cables, but it's a while ago. The devil is in the details here, AC tri-phase cabling can not easily be re-purposed for HVDC purposes because you only have a pair of conductors rather than three 120 degree out of phase lines. So while technically the cable itself can be the same the carrying capacity of a triple of conductors would be reduced and one of the conductors would be idle, so if this is an in-ground or overhead cable not specifically made for DC that is a lot of wasted carrying capacity. | ||