HACKER Q&A
📣 dhosek

A DC Powered Home?


I’ve been thinking about the fact that contemporary home electrical wiring is heavily predicated on AC for power delivery which makes sense for power transmission as it’s been done for most of the last century or so, but with the shift to solar and battery storage, I’m wondering whether it makes sense for in-home electric wiring to move from 120V AC to 12V DC or something similar. Since I’m largely ignorant of practical electrical engineering skills, I’m wondering whether this is something that makes sense and what the engineering challenges would be. Certainly, other than my kitchen, it seems like everything in my house is converting its electricity to DC anyway (or could be easily modified to function with a DC power supply, like the lighting). And perhaps there’s no compelling reason why we need AC for the fridge, microwave, stove, toaster oven or other kitchen stuff.


  👤 wmf Accepted Answer ✓
Your first step is to learn about amperage and wire gauge. After that you could research RVs that run on DC.