What’s the point of inverters in Solar PV systems at home if DC is used?

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So solar panels produce DC current, no conversion actually happens when sunlight is generated as electricity.

The DC current is then converted to AC as it is efficient in the electrical grid for long distances. However it is also used at home and majority of devices (hardly at least) don’t use AC as it gets converted to a safer DC current. This is especially important for electronics and battery recharging. When conversion happens, majority of that energy is lost as heat which you would find in the charging brick. In addition, with smartphones and EVs, wouldn’t direct DC be more efficient and quicker to charge than converting it back to DC. [Proponents claim that it would be beneficial if buildings had a ‘AC-DC converter box’ near a switchboard.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF_A4sp7nM8) (should mention that this is not a very credible source but others also claim similar stuff with DC)

So as I said before, why is AC forced as the current for homes instead of direct DC. Only current that needs to be exported to the grid would benefit from AC conversion. I couldn’t really see any answer to this with solar on mind. They will say AC is used for powering things while the other sites claim that AC burn devices if used.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Ok first off DC isn’t “safer” than AC, just because Edison was an ahole and electrocuted Topsy the elephant doesn’t mean what he said was true. 9 volt DC can kill you just as dead. And the “majority of that energy is lost as heat” is also untrue, acdc rectifiers are 90% + efficient.

As for why you home is AC and will continue to be AC is transformers. You phone charges off 5v DC your electric oven isn’t going to cook to well on a 5v supply. For as long as homes have appliances that opperate at different voltages you’ll need transformers and transformers don’t work on DC.

A DC house supply would need rectifier transformer rectifier to power anything that doesn’t opperate at the voltage of the socket. And if you’re rectifying it anyway why not just have one.

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