They’ve installed sensors in every room to detect whether people are present so that the HVAC system only heats or cools the areas of the home that are in use. To monitor the DC home for its comfort and usability, graduate students are living in the home full time. Events like the Texas storm are perfect illustrations of how a DC-house can benefit individuals and the community.” This ultimately minimizes the strain on the outside grid in emergency situations. “A DC-house can potentially sustain itself for short periods of time by generating its own renewable energy and detaching from the grid through the help of on-site stored energy,” said Ore. This project helped me realize that DC is not only the future, it always was.” Transitioning to DC can simplify homes, buildings and the grid as a whole. “We used biomimicry and the neural connections of the brain as our inspiration, and added smart technologies and control mechanisms. “The creation of the 380-volt DC load center was definitely a challenging and rewarding experience,” said Phil Teague, co-founder and CEO of Rectify LLC. Purdue researchers, in collaboration with Rectify Solar, developed and jointly own a patented distribution system that enables the house to integrate both DC power from solar panels, wind turbines or battery storage with AC power from the local utility. We had to create this infrastructure from scratch.” “You can’t just go to the hardware store and buy DC circuit breakers or other critical distribution systems. graduate who served as the lead researcher on the project. “Large-scale distribution of DC power through a house in the 21st century is really uncharted territory,” said Jonathan Ore, a 2020 Purdue Ph.D. Rectify installed Panasonic 330 panels rated for 14.3 MWh annual production, inverters from CE+T America, and a lithium iron phosphate POM Cube 20 kwh battery system, rated at 12.5 kW continuous power. The rooftop solar system brings the all-electric home to net zero. Rectify Solar provided a full installation of solar panels on the roof, while industry partners supplied new appliances and HVAC systems. The first years were spent renovating and upgrading the infrastructure, and they added insulation and new windows to increase the home’s energy efficiency. The project to transform a 1920s-era West Lafayette, Indiana home into the DC Nanogrid House began in 2017 under Groll’s direction. “To my knowledge, no other existing project has pursued an experimental demonstration of energy consumption improvements using DC power in a residential setting as extensively as we have.” Perry Head of Mechanical Engineering, and member of Purdue’s Center for High Performance Buildings. “We wanted to take a normal house and completely retrofit it with DC appliances and DC architecture,” said Eckhard Groll, the William E. In recent years, however, with renewable energy sources generating DC power, it would make a home more efficient if the electricity did not have to be converted to AC. Why? Back in the late 1800s Thomas Edison had a dream of a DC-based electrical infrastructure, but that dream lost to George Westinghouse’s AC system. While most homes run on alternating current (AC) power because that’s what comes from the utility lines from the grid, researchers at Purdue University decided to switch a home over to all direct current (DC) power.
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