What is the actual purpose of AC power?

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I have a very limited knowledge of electrical engineering that almost entirely revolves around music equipment. From everything that I’ve seen, music equipment ends up converting the AC power to DC power right at the power entry point (or at least soon after). It appears they’re converting AC power to a higher voltage and current DC power. Is the only real advantage of AC power to pump more power over a line to where devices will then manipulate it to what they need in DC? Are there any common household items that actually fully operate off of AC power or does everything convert to DC at some point?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine a pole with a saw blade on the end.

AC power is sorta like pulling it back and forth.

DC power would be like having a massive saw and pushing it continuously.

But ac power is used because you can change voltage with a transformer with no moving parts and minimal points of failure.

Transformers are basically just iron plates held near each other without touching. The AC current causes a magnetic field and even though the line and load don’t touch each other this creates a power in the load side of a different voltage.

This is how we get 110v or 230v from our homes despite power plants making stuff like 10000 volts for the main lines.

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