I have a question about the state of in-home DC power

[G+_Tyson Vanover]

I have a question about the state of in-home DC power. We are looking at potentially remodeling our house in the coming year and beyond running cat6 everywhere I am looking at incorporating home automation and possibly (waiting list willing) a Tesla Powerwall. And I am noticing a lot of converting from AC to DC to AC to DC going on.

 

I have heard from my server admin friends that there has been a move away from individual power supplies in servers in favor of two big ac to dc adaptors feeding a rack of servers instead of each server having 2 power supplies each. And I was wondering if there has been any developments along those lines in the home. Even with moving all the cell chargers to belkin power stations I still count a dozen wall warts and half dozen computer power supplies in the house. If I start getting home automation equipment I can only assume the amount of ac to dc adaptors will skyrocket.

 

And with the powerwall and solar in the mix I am looking at multiple conversions before I hit a device. Sure ac to dc and back are fairly efficient these days, but those efficiency losses multiply as they move down the chain, and even 5% loss per conversion amplifies after 3 or 4 times.

 

Are there any good solutions out there? Just for the household network I have 4 wall warts (modem, nas, wifi router, smart hub) with more coming (itus shield, rasberry pi, etc). Are there power busses that put out multiple 5v feeds I can use to replace multiple wall warts? Is there a wiring and outlet standard that I could just bypass the dc to ac transformer of the solar and battery rig and just feed dc to my devices?

 

Or am I overthinking this and trying to eke out slight efficiencies for efficiency's sake?

[G+_Eddie Foy]

DC doesn't do that well on long runs.  AC rill run along the outside skin of the wire, while DC runs through the center/core.

 

If you are charging the Tesla battery via grid, you are wasting money and its friggin pointless and wasting power and most likely causing more greenhouse gasses.

[G+_Tyson Vanover]

We are in early planning stages, powerwall will probably be added about the same time as solar and possibly a hybrid furnace. As for the dc power loss over distance, we are looking at maximum runs of 100ft from the "power cluster" if we ran to outlets. As for the networking equipment it is all together on a shelf, and reducing from 4-8 wall warts to a single adaptor that serves multiple devices wouldn't have that issue.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Well, nothing has been done at the home appliance level that I know of yet.  So your refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, etc will still need AC.  Electronics that use batteries are almost all using USB standards for charging, which means you should be able to get rid of those multiple wall warts for a single unit.  You just can't run the wires very far, probably limited to the same room.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Also, yes, data centers have been doing this sort of thing for a long time.  They have large AC to DC converters that can power racks and racks of equipment.  Generally either 24v or 48v.  When you're powering hundreds or thousands of servers permanently it makes an appreciable difference doing a single conversion instead of hundreds/thousands.

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

One more thing... DC is great in a Data Center because you can have short runs in a highly-controlled environment. Those things make DC efficient, safe and reliable.

 

In a house, you're going to get wiring schemes that you never though of while building, and a DC system as exists in a Data Center would be INCREDIBLY dangerous because though you would be keeping voltage down to 12-48 volts, the current would be MUCH higher than similar-rated AC applications. 

 

I don't want to scare you off, but an uncontrolled environment like an entire house is probably not the best place to deploy high-current DC. -- Now a workbench or a workshop, ABSOLUTELY! :)