You’re likely familiar with the “war of the currents” that gripped America in the 1880’s – when inventors Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse (with a teensy bit of help from some chap named Tesla) tussled over how best to harness electricity. Whilst the former favoured a system called “direct current” (DC), the latter championed “alternating current” (AC) and – *spoiler alert* – AC won.
But maybe Westinghouse’s AC didn’t win the war, after all – just the first battle. As of 2022, almost a billion people worldwide still don’t have access to electricity, something the UN aims to fix by 2030. But at the same time, we’re living through a climate emergency caused by our reliance on non-renewable energy. So how can we expand power consumption AND limit its impact on the environment?
As it turns out, DC could help with both… Was Edison right all along? Find out in the latest explainer video from iluli by Mike Lamb. Making sense of technology, one byte at a time.