system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5: Why is AC current used to power houses instead of DC?
gpt
You can change the voltage of AC power using a hunk of iron and coils of wire

Every other explanation is skipping around past this core bit, it was *the* deciding factor in the selection of AC over DC.  DC is actually better for transmission but harder to work with

Power lost in transmission is based on the square of the current flowing through the wire but power delivered is the current times the voltage so if you step up the voltage to a high value you don't have to send much current and therefore don't lose much energy in the power lines.

The ability to step up DC voltages wasn't available until a few decades after we settled on our power grid standards.  Without access to transistors or at least vacuum tubes(though these would be inefficient) the only way to take one DC voltage and change it to a higher/lower one is to hook a motor to a generator and spin it up.  This isn't great for transforming voltages for every home

These days we are slowly converting some big cross country lines into High Voltage DC (HVDC) lines because AC is actually *less* efficient to send long distance at a given voltage than DC.  There are some losses due to the Alternating part and switching to DC removes these.