One can write volumes on this subject and someone has. There are college courses on the subject. Electrical Engineering.
http://www.ferris.edu/bachelor-degree-electrical-engineering.htmBut speaking in a general sense, its all about efficiencies and related costs. The higher the voltage is, the lower the amperage will be for a given wattage. This means smaller gauge wires at higher voltages which means less expensive wire runs and less expensive disconnect means as well as fuses and breakers. Also less use of transformers and the KVAR costs that can be associated with them. I should add that high KVAR costs are typically associated with industry more so than commercial and more so than residential. (Just an interesting fact -
http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=Automation_Update&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=62578 )
As for renewable energies...
Essentially the same reasons. Efficiencies and related costs.
If I were to compare it a child growing up, I might say that, "It all pretty much got up and started walking just a little more than 100 years ago."
http://staff.fcps.net/rroyster/war.htmBut its "birth" goes even farther back than that.
Sometime during the mid 1700's, Luigi Galvani was dissecting a frog when the steel scalpel he was using touched a brass tack. This caused the dead frogs leg to "twitch."
Galvanic response. Other names would soon join into the study of electricity. Names such as; Alessandro Volta, André Marie Ampère, Georg Simon Ohm, Michael Faraday, James Watt, just to name a few. From those humble beginnings, only about 250 years ago, we now have today,
http://fusedweb.llnl.gov/Makes me wonder. Were will the human race be in another 250 years? Provided of course we don't obliterate ourselves in this madness for more and more energy.
