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Having an AC to DC converter at the mains to your house would be great. Using a reasonably safe 48V DC in the home seems reasonable. Modern high efficiency motor driven appliances all use internal AC->DC converters and a 3-phase DC->AC driver anyway. I'm still on the fence about what the DC voltage should be - upwards of 60-80 are still nice and require less current for a given load but you don't want your PC and TV to need too many stages to get low voltage.

It would be nice if some people got together and wrote a standard for DC powered homes. Preferably without a bunch of patented stuff included in the standard. Then all the pieces could be produced by various industry players and we could switch.



PoE seems pretty nice in that regard. Easy to use, lots of appliances run on it, cabling is easy and it can carry data.


I have a big 48 port PoE switch (Ubiquity) and power tons of devices from it. You can get a GbE PoE “uninjector” which will give you a 5V micro USB output and use that to power tons of things all over the house, while also leaving the GbE usable at full speed (on Amazon). I also buy PoE versions of things whenever possible. I even have PoE switches powered by the core switch and home automation gear powered by PoE (e.g. Control4). Great low wattage DC distribution, and getting greater with PoE++ (I have just one 4 port PoE++ for now, but it is also 10GbE.)


Can't carry enough current to run more than some electronics though. PoE vacuum cleaners wouldn't work.


True, but you could certainly charge a roomba over PoE.




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