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How do we create or adapt infrastructure within homes or workplaces so that DC appliances can be adopted?
Former Community Member
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FYI, as part of an Open University research project, I am looking in detail at how we might set about providing a DC electrical ecosystem, as an alternative to our familiar AC one. There are several alternatives - but neither technical excellence nor energy efficiency will be enough to justify a competing system, with all its attendant incompatibilities, adapters and converters, etc etc. However, there is an acute problem which may: We need to increase the capacity of the final mile, to support large-scale Electric Vehicle use, the switch to heat pumps, and to take full advantage of the increasing use of batteries with solar systems. DC is an attractive option for this - but should it be implemented with a parallel final-mile network (very disruptive), or by some other method?
I am very interested in your information from 1931. I have been trying to find out which voltages were available where and when in the UK (and whether they were AC or DC), but this doesn't seem to have been documented anywhere I can find. I am however, aware that there were some DC households (I think at +200VDC), at least until the early 1960's. (They were fed from the grid by substation mercury arc rectifiers.) Can anyone suggest a source of detailed information?
FYI, as part of an Open University research project, I am looking in detail at how we might set about providing a DC electrical ecosystem, as an alternative to our familiar AC one. There are several alternatives - but neither technical excellence nor energy efficiency will be enough to justify a competing system, with all its attendant incompatibilities, adapters and converters, etc etc. However, there is an acute problem which may: We need to increase the capacity of the final mile, to support large-scale Electric Vehicle use, the switch to heat pumps, and to take full advantage of the increasing use of batteries with solar systems. DC is an attractive option for this - but should it be implemented with a parallel final-mile network (very disruptive), or by some other method?
I am very interested in your information from 1931. I have been trying to find out which voltages were available where and when in the UK (and whether they were AC or DC), but this doesn't seem to have been documented anywhere I can find. I am however, aware that there were some DC households (I think at +200VDC), at least until the early 1960's. (They were fed from the grid by substation mercury arc rectifiers.) Can anyone suggest a source of detailed information?
