DC lighting in the home?
Michael Alwan| Posted inGreen Products and Materialson
We are a custom builder in Austin, TX and wanted to ping the community to see if anyone has any experience with dedicated DC lighting distribution in a residential application? Our feeling is that it is where we will inevitably be going in the near future as the benefits are endless ranging from improved efficiency to better dimming -ability in lights. Right now we are only doing this in recessed cans, running all 12V LEDs from a centralized transformer, or directly from a battery+PV application.
Any range of discussion would be great!!
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Replies
Michael,
I have lived in a house that is wired for 12-volt DC lighting for 34 years. Although every room in my house is wired for both 12 volts DC and 120 volts AC, I find that the lights that I use most are AC, not DC.
My house is off-grid, so my batteries provide DC. Using DC directly avoids the inefficiency of processing my power through an inverter.
Note that low-voltage DC wiring experiences more voltage drop than high-voltage AC wiring (watts = amps x volts), so you will need heavier wires to get the same watts from low-voltage DC than you would from high-voltage AC.
If you've located a type of LED lamp that you like, it's certainly more efficient to have one central transformer than to depend on individual transformers for each lamp.