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Time to Ditch 120V AC? How a Low-Voltage, DC-Powered Home Might Work
- rini17 5y agoOn the contrary, I expect copper savings attractive enough to see wiring everything with two thin wires (thickly insulated) on 6000V, with electronics in every socket doing the conversion to 120V AC or 12V or 5V DC. It'll be also simple to install, unlike Cat5 or whatever the article proposes.
- quickthrowman 5y agoBack of the napkin calculation for electric oven/ac unit/clothes dryer (30 amp breaker @ 240v) 24A @ 240v = 5760w 5760w / 12v = 480A A wire size calculator is telling me that would require #800kcmil size wire, which is over an inch in diameter, and it’s also an uncommon size. You could parallel 4 smaller conductors, but they’ll still be far larger than the #8 conductors you would use for 240v. So no, 12v house power isn’t feasible. It’s far cheaper to manufacture low power transformers to convert 120v AC to 12/24v DC.
- rini17 5y agoIt mentions 500 W at 48V will be all we need cuz all the appliances are getting so efficient :) Overall it's so confused and so hard to argue with.
- jermaustin1 5y agoThere are large appliances where DC doesn't make sense, but something like a LNG or Propane would make better sense for cooking, and for heating and cooling, switching to geothermal with a DC heat pump would be a viable alternative. For clothes drying, what most of the world does is hang their clothes up to dry.