ELi5: What is the advantage of high volts vs high amps?

Question

So, the purpose of a transformer is to trade volts for amps.

Is there an advantage to one or the other? Why would you want to change it?

My understanding is that a transformer is like of like a torque converter. So does this mean that a high voltage application would be like a high electrical leverage, and a high amps would be more for a high speed/rate of flow application?

In: 4

Answer 1

High voltage losses are from radiation. High current losses are from heating the wire. So far it has been easier to minimize the radiation losses from high voltage than to minimize the heat losses from high current. We move to the next voltage level when the engineers figure out how to keep the loss at an acceptable minimum.

When room temperature super conductors are found then the push for higher voltages will cease and voltages will come back down to minimize transformer and high voltage losses.