Investigation of a micro DC power grid in Glava Hillringsberg – a smart grid

The technical development has made obsolete the previous motivation for use of alternating current instead of direct current.
In local networks and building installations, direct current nowadays has a number of advantages compared with using alternating current. Almost all electrical appliances have changed the electrical character to being electronic devices. Almost all appliances have and will have electronic interfaces to the electrical grid. Current breaking, which was previously a large problem, is no longer crucial. The problem has disappeared with electronic loads. See ref. video 1, Breaking DC current to electronic loads.

At the same time, the basic design of all new appliances is clearly that of DC appliances.
In addition, in today’s design, they are multi-current and multi-voltage appliances, which can run on both direct and alternating current. In upcoming designs, as only DC appliances, they can be more efficient than today’s appliances. This change has been driven by the development of electronics and the desire to achieve the highest possible efficiency in the use of electricity. More recently, the desire for increased efficiency in the use of new local energy sources, in particular solar cells, has pushed ideas in the direction of the use of direct current.
 

The project is part of the Interreg project FEM, see also the project homepage www.femweb.nu .

Video 1 - Breaking DC electronic loads  ( .avi file 225 MB)

Video 2 - Motor inverter running on DC and AC, a comparison
   ( .mpg file 216 MB)

Video 3 - Solar cell factory fanroom part 1    ( .wmv file 193 MB)

Video 4 - Solarccell factory fanroom part 2   ( .wmv file 492 MB)

Index of references for the complete project

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