AC vs. DC Home: An Efficiency Comparison

Abstract

The birth of electricity witnessed the war of currents between AC and DC as the medium of power transfer. DC lost the battle because it did not possess the ability of voltage transformation at that time. However, with the progress in the power electronics technology, the invention and development of Power Electronic Converters (PECs) has established the resurgence of DC. Furthermore, the trend is shifting to DC loads and most of the energy efficient appliances operate on DC nowadays; which adds weight to the DC side. This paper presents an insight on energy savings potential of DC at distribution scale by comparing AC and DC home on efficiency grounds. The AC and DC home are analyzed for efficiency values considering two different topologies, one with a main PEC supplying all the loads and the other with separate PEC for each load; making a total of four configurations. The systems are simulated for varying efficiencies of the PECs considering daily load variation. The results depict DC system to be better than AC system with an efficiency advantage for 3.88% and 3.62% for bulk and separate PEC topologies respectively.