I’ve been thinking about the fact that contemporary home electrical wiring is heavily predicated on AC for power delivery which makes sense for power transmission as it’s been done for most of the last century or so, but with the shift to solar and battery storage, I’m wondering whether it makes sense for in-home electric wiring to move from 120V AC to 12V DC or something similar. Since I’m largely ignorant of practical electrical engineering skills, I’m wondering whether this is something that makes sense and what the engineering challenges would be. Certainly, other than my kitchen, it seems like everything in my house is converting its electricity to DC anyway (or could be easily modified to function with a DC power supply, like the lighting). And perhaps there’s no compelling reason why we need AC for the fridge, microwave, stove, toaster oven or other kitchen stuff.
Comments
wmf•1h ago
Your first step is to learn about amperage and wire gauge. After that you could research RVs that run on DC.
iSloth•9m ago
Unless we standardize on 380-400v
wmf•1m ago
High voltage DC over 50 V is usually considered pretty dangerous.
pwg•8m ago
Then, after researching amperage and wire gauge, pay attention to the fact that power losses in wires from the inherent resistance thereof is proportional to the square of the current passing through those wires:
wmf•1h ago
iSloth•9m ago
wmf•1m ago
pwg•8m ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power#Resistive_circu...