Recently I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at a conference in Prague ‘Realizing the promise of DC Technology‘. Central in the discussions there were the obstacles in the way of implementing a system-wide direct current voltage scheme, rather than the alternating current one. A DC system promises lower transportation losses and less conversion losses to name but a few. Since for example many household appliances already work on DC, while the outlet provides AC current. To allow the devices to function, they need to convert the AC current to DC. Because of this conversion a considerable loss occurs, somewhere in the region of 0.5 to 5%.
While switching to an all-DC system provides many advantages, there are many obstacles before the switch could take place.
In the video below I talk about the paradigm-shift that a DC system could be.
*UPDATE* and the full video from the same conference: