Did you know that in the early days of electricity, there was a duel of sorts between Thomas Edison (and his supporters) and Nikola Tesla (and his supporters) about how to best deliver power to our homes?
Its true. Edison was a large proponent of delivering DC (direct current i.e. battery power) over power lines, but Tesla had another idea; delivering AC (alternating current i.e. wall power) over power lines. Edison's argument was that (based on the technology at the time) DC power was the standard and could be used to run many household items but also could be stored in batteries for power backup later. George Westinghouse (backing Tesla) argued that DC was terribly difficult to transmit over long distances and was far more costly at that. Edison's rebuttal was to propose the early beginnings to distributed power systems with more localized power sources as opposed to centrally located power sources that AC transmission could utilize. There was quite a bit more back and forth between the two but eventually, Tesla and Westinghouse won, so AC power became the standard the world over.
Note: To read more details, check out the Wikipedia page for the "War of Currents"
Fast forward to 2011. The number of items we own that consume electricity is increasing daily and we're finding out the hard way that there's always a need for more power and more power outlets than ever before. But take a closer look at those items you have plugged into the wall. How many of those items have the famous "power brick" or that boxy plug that takes up so much damn space? I would be willing to bet that 90% of the electric items in your house use some kind of similar trick, either internally or externally. Maybe a bit smaller percentage depending on the number of lamps in your house, but you get the picture.
These power bricks or wall worts do one thing - change AC to DC for the consumption of your electronics. Does it have a battery? It's using DC. Does it contain a processor? It's using DC. Does it fit in your pocket? It's using DC. If you looked at all of those devices, you'd probably see a variety of different voltage and current requirements. For example, the laptop I'm typing this on uses 19.5V, while my work laptop uses 16.5V. Newer phones typically charge with a USB port, which is 5V. Actually, as our electronics get smaller and smaller, more things will charge with the 5V of USB. The prevalence of DC powered electronics makes me think its time for a revolution. Here's my proposal.
Companies need to decide on a standard DC supply voltage for their products. This standard will no doubt change as our electronics get smaller and our battery technology improves, but let's start with, say, 15V. Now that all of our DC electronics (outside of the realm of USB) follow that standard, we can plan our houses around this. Our AC consumption can be reduced to a 100A service or less per house and one more benefit we'd see is localized power generation. That's right, solar cells change the sun's rays to DC, and as the cells become easier to produce, cheaper to buy and more efficient, more and more houses can go this route.
A few solar panels, a battery bank and an optional inverter (which changes the DC to AC) would be all that would be required to generate your own local DC power. With the inverter, any unused DC that's not charging your battery backup bank could be converted to AC and either used locally or sold back to the power company.
The technology is here to get a head start, but of course this would require the electronics companies to agree on a standard and forgo the profit from selling accessories when your power brick eventually fails, but I'm sure they could make it up elsewhere. There are upsides to this route of course: your home electronics would shrink because they wouldn't require the power transformation internally, the devices wouldn't require the power electronics to change AC to DC which makes them less expensive to manufacture, and your home electronics would shrink in size on top of that.
The world of solar power is taking off at an increasing pace with plenty of money going toward finding methods of creating less expensive and more efficient solar panels. Battery technology is also getting the same attention with its increasing presence in consumer electronics and electric vehicles. Inverter technology is getting better every generation with a large focus on solar inverters specifically from several companies. I think its only a matter of years, not decades, until we can see this vision start to materialize.
Until then always remember
It is the Geeks that will inherit the Earth
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