Solar power expected to dominate electricity generation by 2050—even without more ambitious climate policies::In pursuit of the ambitious goal of reaching net-zero emissions, nations worldwide must expand their use of clean energy sources. In the case of solar energy, this change may already be upon us.
This makes me wonder if we’ll see a return to homes having DC for power instead of AC just to skip transforming DC to AC for homes that go totally off grid.
I can see in the future a standard for DC power with a completely different power socket that saves up the round trip of DC to AC then back into DC for all our electronics. There are fairly substantial benefits to be had but as I think it through the usable DC is 3 to 12V and appreciable load will mean those cables will push a lot of amps. Not sure the economics will work out without it being high voltage and that fits nothing DC today. If it’s high voltage then everything needs a converter again.
Setting a DC standard today will be a world wide nightmare, we need it but it’s got to be dumb for longevities sake. It’s far off I think.
What about all the appliances expecting AC input?
There would still be a need to convert DC to AC, both for that reason and for export to the grid, but the first thing a lot of appliances do is internally convert to DC anywhere. If it became the norm for homes to have a distributed DC supply, there could well be a cottage industry in replacing the PSU component springs up.
There was a time early in the electrification of America with Edison, he pushed for DC over AC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents
The last DC utility turned off in 2007. http://www.jaygarmon.net/2010/11/in-what-year-did-last-of-new-yorks-dc.html
As far as answering your question, you can run a transformer, but new construction and new appliances will likely be built with DC service in mind.