Thursday 8 May 2008

Time for the AC/DC House

Every tool or gadget I acquire these days seems to come with another transformer.I suspect I won't be alone in being unable to say how many of the machines I possess are plugged in and consuming power even when the device is absent and the transformers still carry on eating power. From where I sit I can count 30 occupied sockets,and I'm sure many should have been unplugged months ago. So why not deal with this demand by running a parallel DC supply into homes and business consumers? If Utilities were to put an a smart transformer at the point of supply,there are many start ups aching to supply the kit. This measure alone would save on the energy wasted when we convert AC in to DC using all those transformers. Now, let's go one step further.and put solar PV panels on your roof. One of the biggest costs of photovoltaics is for the inverter used to turn the electricity generated by the roof from DC into AC. So what if we took a feed from the roof-generated supply to feed our devices? We would save the energy used converting the energy from DC to AC before turning it back into DC and this can eat up to 40% of the energy. The renewable locally-generated power will be used most efficiently this way, and the balance can be sold on. Perhaps the next generation of homes will have dual DC and AC circuits with smart tech organising power supply according to needs? Just an idea.

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