Assessment of 48 volts DC for homes

Abstract

There is a compelling need to reduce carbon footprints. With the pollution bringing the capital of India to a standstill in November 2017, this is being emphatically reiterated. This paper aims to investigate the use of DC in homes and also the use of solar energy to reduce electricity demand drastically. Renewable energy in homes comes from solar panels in its DC form. Similarly, most of the electronic gadgets used in homes today consume DC. Brush Less DC (BLDC) motors and inverter technology have enabled other appliances to operate on DC. Mainly due to unavailability of power and inefficiency of power distribution, ‘24×7’ uninterrupted electricity remains a dream even for most of the urban population today. Rural scenario is still worse. To remain powered during outages, most houses store energy in DC batteries, which is again inefficiently converted to AC by inverters. Because of these compelling reasons, DC power replacing AC in homes is gaining momentum. Some projects are also in progress. Focus of this paper is to answer the pertinent questions; what are the main drivers of DC power in homes and how this initiative could be supported by working on Indian standards and promoting an eco-system of DC appliances. Based on experiments and quantitative analysis, a safe and power efficient AC-DC hybrid solution is proposed for fulfilling the basic needs of uninterrupted power and integration of renewable energy for essential functions of homes in rural as well as urban scenarios.