While in theory this might sound good I strongly suggest you reconsider if
you care at all about energy efficiency. At 12V standard items such as light
bulbs start sucking up substantial amounts of amps. This is bad because the
losses in your wiring is dependant on I squared R, meaning if you double the
current you QUADRUPLE the power loss. Consider a 100W light bulb, at 12V it
draws 10 times the amount of current as it would at 120V, that means you
have 100 times the losses in your wiring alone. Just my opinion. TTYL

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Ghetto Scientist
> Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 10:38
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: [OT]: The 12 Volt Home
>
>
> For sometime I've been thinking about the merits of wiring a house with a
> low voltage bus (12 volts).
>
> There are a number of reasons I think this could be beneficial.  First I
> really don't like the switching power supplies in PCs.  They are
> noisy not to
> mention the fact that they seem to go bad on a semi-regular basis
> and when you
> put a few of them in one room they generate a nontrivial amount
> of heat.  If
> I wired my house for 12 volts I could run a PCs off a simple voltage
> regulator / DC-DC converter.  Another benefit would be small
> power supplies for
> embedded systems (home automation components) are much smaller
> when the primary is
> only 12 volts as apposed to 110 volts.   Once white LEDs come
> down in price
> they could replace the [hot, inefficient] incandescent lights currently in
> use.  Also I could build a big UPS for all low voltage items in my house.
>
> Another reason I am interested in low voltage home systems is I have often
> though of living "off the [power] grid".  12 volt systems would largely
> eliminate the need for expensive power inverters.
>
> What I am wondering is what would be the best (most efficient) method of
> stepping down enough power from line voltage to 12 volts?  Would
> a "simple" wire
> wound transformer due?   Maybe a switching power supply.
>
> Sorry for the odd questions, I know next to nothing about power
> conversion.
>
> --adam
>
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