DC …

i think we should stay in DC … not washington, but Direct Current. back in the old days it was better to have your power transmitted and up/down-converted thru transformers etc. in the last 10-15 years more and more DC/DC converters were engineered, and the efficiencies went up to (i believe) the low 90% range.

think about your PC: AC comes in, gets immediately converted into DC, and thru switches and coils/capacitors downconverted to -12/-5/+3.3/+5/+12 V DC with a max power of 200-350W for a typical desktop PC, and then even your motherboard does a little bit of switching itself and supplies the CPU/RAM/PCIe etc with anything from .9V to 3.3V … everytime you convert you loose. so why not do everything in DC, and switch only once or twice?

once could built a DC system powered by solar panels, that uses e.g. 28V DC … at let’s say 100A – it’s easy to charge batteries at 26-27V, and it’s not really lethal if you should touch a wire. i’m convinced one could even change an A/C compressor to run on that! besides it’s easier to go down in Voltage than up, and not to care about a nice clean filtered sine wave – and there are RV appliances that already run on battery power!