In the last year I've become more and more convinced, as probably many others on this forum, that our global energy future will be heavily dominated by solar. Sure, in some places not but I think in 30-50 years solar will provide the majority of electrical power generation globally. Now, I'm thinking this will very likely make the electric grid far more decentralized, as pointed out by many others of course. In addition with the rise of solar (and other non-sequestered-carbon-releasing forms of energy production) power generation will be more intermittent and hence there will be increased need of energy storage which will probably also be to a large extent decentralized and coupled with generation (think PV on roof with battery in basement).
Our typical energy grids today are based on AC, for well known reasons. With less need for transmitting large amounts of power over large distances in the future, for the reasons mentioned above, won't it make sense that the grid as we know it will move more towards DC? I'm thinking this since solar PV generates DC and batteries are charged with and release DC.
I had a look around my house and started thinking: modern electric lighting (LEDs) all have small AC/DC converters in them (the old incandescent bulbs with glowing wires could run on either AC or DC since with 50 Hz the wire would never cool down enough to make a flicker anyway), everything battery powered from mobile phones to lap-tops to my Tesla is DC charged, my desktop computers PSU converts AC to DC, there is AC to DC conversion going on in my TV, my home alarm system etc. etc. The only application in a home where AC is better is for some things with motors, right? Such as mixers, blenders, vacuum cleaner etc? (please correct me if I'm wrong).
So my point is: do you think that in the future (20-50 years from now) we will have DC in our sockets at home and we could do away with these:
and skip having one or two quite massive AC to DC converters ("chargers") in our cars. Instead we would probably need a few DC to AC converters ("inverters") for a few applicances (but actually many of the motorized appliances in a home probably run DC motors anyway).
Our typical energy grids today are based on AC, for well known reasons. With less need for transmitting large amounts of power over large distances in the future, for the reasons mentioned above, won't it make sense that the grid as we know it will move more towards DC? I'm thinking this since solar PV generates DC and batteries are charged with and release DC.
I had a look around my house and started thinking: modern electric lighting (LEDs) all have small AC/DC converters in them (the old incandescent bulbs with glowing wires could run on either AC or DC since with 50 Hz the wire would never cool down enough to make a flicker anyway), everything battery powered from mobile phones to lap-tops to my Tesla is DC charged, my desktop computers PSU converts AC to DC, there is AC to DC conversion going on in my TV, my home alarm system etc. etc. The only application in a home where AC is better is for some things with motors, right? Such as mixers, blenders, vacuum cleaner etc? (please correct me if I'm wrong).
So my point is: do you think that in the future (20-50 years from now) we will have DC in our sockets at home and we could do away with these:
and skip having one or two quite massive AC to DC converters ("chargers") in our cars. Instead we would probably need a few DC to AC converters ("inverters") for a few applicances (but actually many of the motorized appliances in a home probably run DC motors anyway).