During a brief period in the late 1880s and early 1890s, Nikola Tesla’s AC competed with Thomas Edison’s DC. This “War of the Currents” was settled with a decisive victory for Tesla’s AC. DC retreated to niche applications such as electrolysis, aluminum smelting, DC railway electrification, as well as in later years communications and computing. But history didn’t end there. Today, DC applications are undergoing a remarkable expansion. The growth is driven by such applications as electric vehicles, photovoltaics, battery storage, artificial intelligence (AI) and other datacenter applications.
Every time that AC meets DC in a network, a conversion is necessary. Every converter means additional equipment and implies conversion losses. Could the electrical networks of the future reduce losses by re-imagining grid topologies so that fewer conversions are needed? In other words, grids that integrate DC connections? This is the concept of the hybrid AC and DC grid.
Looking at AI data centers, for example, and the trend towards gigawatt-scale campuses, even a few percentage points of efficiency can translate into substantial operational and financial gains.
ABB is no newcomer to the world of DC. The company supplied an AC to DC converter for a foundry in Frankfurt in 1911 [1], and commercialized pulse-width modulation and the variable speed drive in 1975 [2]. Over recent years, progress in power electronics has improved the performance, costs and reliability of power converters. Today the company offers a broad range of DC products ranging from heavy applications on ships and in industries to high-performance datacenters.
ABB Review
Parallel to the BCG study, the next issue of ABB Review, the company’s flagship technical publication, will be dedicated to DC. The journal will look at DC applications from a technology perspective. It will present a selection from across the company’s broad portfolio, ranging from DC on ships to DC in datacenters. The direct current edition of ABB Review will be published later in 2026.
