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Old 06-02-11, 08:19 AM   #9
Ryland
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Western Wisconsin.
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The direction that solar is going looks to be the micro inverter that is attached to the back of each solar panel so that you can have as short of run of low voltage DC as possible and bumping the voltage up as close to the source as possible, the other thing that is being done is higher voltage DC wiring between panels and inverters or batteries, in my parents solar electric system we wired up the PV panels at 72v and installed a maximum power point tracker that among other things it drops the voltage down to the lower voltage needed for the battery bank (higher voltage battery bank would have been expensive), the panels being wired at this higher voltage reduced the losses enough point to offset the cost of the extra equipment.
Running low voltage wiring any distance is not creating a flying car, it's putting your wheels on a dirt road.
To me, things like switching power supplies that replace transformers are the flying car like devices that we should be looking at because they allow us to push electricity at an efficient high voltage and without alot of losses step it down to exactly what the device needs, after all, even if you did have a device running at a lower voltage you would still need a voltage regulator or a DC to DC converter to give the device the exact voltage that it needed, otherwise the further you get from your battery bank (longer wire run) the dimmer your light bulb is going to be and if that voltage drop is great enough your newer modern electronics will start burning up.
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