Tesla turns in his grave: Is it finally time to switch from AC
to DC?  High-power power lines  Share This article  AC power
transmission losses are greater than DC losses. That is hardly
an industry secret. In fact the reason you can wirelessly charge
a cell phone is because any changing current will radiate away
some energy. You just need to coil the wire up to gather some of
that energy in a convenient place. At the Three Gorges Dam in
China, high voltage DC transmission lines were chosen to bring
the power to the people for a variety of reasons. Many power
companies are now starting to rethink the decisions that made AC
transmission the obvious choice in the previous era.  Depending
on the voltage, wire characteristics, and environment, other
parasitic losses in AC transmission can become insidious, much
more so than the relatively small radiative loss. At a mains
power frequency of 50 or 60 hertz, the skin effect — where the
majority of the current travels only on the surface of the
conductor — starts to