Electrifying Older Homes
Purdue University researchers have retrofitted an entire house to run on its own efficient DC-powered nano-grid. Watch this video to learn more.
“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. “We used biomimicry and the neural connections of the brain as our inspiration, and added smart technologies and control mechanisms. Transitioning to DC can simplify homes, buildings and the grid as a whole. This project helped me realize that DC is not only the future, it always was.”
Transcript
00:00:00 We know there are some critical challenges in how we improve the efficiency of homes, which we need to change in the next 50 years or less to be able to respond to the climate challenges. And technology that can accelerate this: heat pumps, electric water heaters, electric cooktops... all of those things add electrical load to the system. Electrical standards require us to upgrade our panels from 50 or 100 amps to 150 or 200 amps. That would cost between $2,000 to $10,000. Our idea was, okay, can we potentially reduce that by just disaggregating things. So perhaps we can heat the water first at, let's say, late at night. And then run the heat pump at a later time. Basically move the peaks from on top of each other to side by side. And that reduces the overall peak. We only adjusted the set points of the heat pump and water heater, and we added just one sensor, which is relatively cheap and monitors the net power of the house
00:01:10 to make sure that we are really keeping the current draw, right? At the end of the 31 days, we saw that we were able to maintain the peak below 100 amps. And this is a typical breaker panel rating that most people have in their homes, even if they have a gas furnace. Most of the homes, it would work without a major change of lifestyle for people. If we can make everything around this process easier and less expensive, then people can adopt it.