Here you go, those are $100 bills.

When I talked to one of our VAR's he said that one of the local hospital chains was one of his best and worst customers, best because of all the expensive gear they bought, worst because they were so demanding. They actually paid to have trenching done to make sure that their backup link at one facility went out a different CO which was on a different uplink facility (ie truly divergent paths with no single mode of failure), and that was just for PACS, not telesurgery.

I certainly can't argue with that, there were indeed.

Couldn't find any numbers for 800kv AC, the Tepco 1,000kv AC line is >5%/1,000km so the extra 10% from 735 to 800 isn't going to help much.

Ah, I had forgotten about 6-15R, whenever we deal with 240V it's always L6-20 or L6-30 twistlock or C13, neither of which would work in a kitchen. I do see you can get 6-15R in GFCI which is good since that's required in kitchens.

Wouldn't pass inspection in the US since they're not classified in the NEC.

Everything from your wall switches to your wires will cause you never ending problems.

Mechanical wall switches are still rated for DC. Houses USED to be wired for DC a lot. You only have to replace the stuff that was designed after AC was pervasive and wasn't engineered to handle DC.

(I forgot to mention that you'll also have to replace the light dimmers, too, along with most other electronic, rather than mechanical, switches. They usually use a current-zero-crossing turnoff device, and DC won't cross zero unless you force it to do so.)

Even if you replace your wall switches and outlets, your wires will degrade over time and develop holes and other blemishes that will cause a fire.

No they won't - unless they're wet (in which case you have bigger problems than galvanic corrosion). Electromigration at the current densities involved in house wiring is not an issue, nor is insulation breakdown. The wires and fittings will be just fine.

(DANG this stupid touchpad... )

An "inverter", by definition, actually has alternating voltage as a substantial output, or at least somewhere in the circuitry. A switching regulator has a cycling voltage, but it isn't an AC output, or even an AC intermediate.

But they're very similar.

(Also: I was going to mention, above, that the current supplied through the pull-down (or clamp-at-ground) switch is where the extra output current comes from, compensating for the lowered voltage with higher current for similar amounts of power. If the switches, inductors, capacitors, and wiring were all ideal, the driver and sensor circuitry didn't eat any power, and no energy was radiated away as radio noise, efficiency would be 100%.)

A down-stepping DC-DC converter is not an inverter?

Nope. But the pieces of the implementations are similar enough in function that it's close.

A typical DC/DC down converter involves two switches, an inductor, and both input and output filter capacitors, plus control circuitry to sense the output voltage and time the switches. (There may also be a VERY small resistor in series with the inductor to sample the output current if current regulation is necessary, but it's omitted for high efficiency if that's not an issue.) One end of the inductor is hooked to the output cap, the other through the switches to the input cap and to ground.

The pull-up switch is always active (typically a transistor). The control circuitry turns it on and the current in the inductor ramps up, charging the output capacitor at an increasing rate. After a while the pull-up switch is turned off and the pull down switch is turned on. The current through the inductor ramps down, but before it goes through a stop and reverses the pull-up switch is turned back on and the pull-down turned off. The pull-down switch may be a diode, which switches on as needed automatically, but for high efficiency it's usually another transistor, because it has a lower voltage drop and thus is more efficient.

The control circuitry varies the percent of pull-up versus pull-down time to keep the average output voltage at the desired level. The frequency may be controlled or may be allowed to vary somewhat.

So the waveform in the inductor is a sawtooth, and the current never reverses. An "inverter" by definition,

Either of the world wars.

The parasitic losses of DC over long distance is reason enough that it's not done

Siemens quotes 3.5% loss per 1,000km for +-800kv DC vs 6.7% for 735kv AC systems, exactly the opposite of your claim. I think I'll trust one of the biggest names in power over someone with a free bitcoin scam in their signature.

Which of course means we are no threat whatsoever to to each other, because on both sides of the relationship the leadership is and is guaranteed continued to be completely rational.

Practical consumer-level devices do well to hit 20%.
No, 80% efficiency is pretty much the bottom of the barrel in switching mode power supplies, 95% from 20-80% of rated load is doable for around $200 for 1kw loads.

You're going to install a NEMA 14-30 and use a conversion cable to run your European kettle?

And what is the system efficiency of
Grid AC -> Battery DC -> House AC -> USB DC?