Before you do your propeller head and take flight and delight in Direct Current (DC) grid technology, we must ground you with some “power” politics: Europeans and Americans cannot agree.

The American EMerge Alliance attempts to make 380 V DC the new standard, while Europe’s CurrentOS Foundation advocates 350 V DC.

YouSolar is based in California and runs its nanogrid at 380 V DC. This nominal potential is called the “bus” potential.

The U.S. advocates a 380 V DC  bus while Europe attempts to standardize a bus at 350 V DC. Which bus will win the race?

Multiple PowerBlocs nanogrids can cluster into a microgrid, forming a multi-megawatt battery and power system.

The PowerBloc is ready to connect with other 380 V DC microgrids directly.

The PowerBloc’s DC nanogrid operates precisely like a DC microgrid. Each component — solar panel, battery, grid input, electric vehicle (for DC fast charging and vehicle-to-home), and fuel cell — connects in parallel and monitors the potential in the band around the nominal potential, 380 V DC. When this potential reaches a certain value, the component delivers or takes power. For example, at 378 V DC, a certain battery delivers power, and at 375 V DC, a fuel cell kicks in, and so forth.

How a PowerBloc component (a.k.a. module) responds to the bus potential is called “droop response.”

For example, one battery may deliver power from 375 V to 378 V and then turn off, while another battery takes over at 377 V and keeps delivering power until the bus reaches 382 V. These are just examples to show the simplicity of DC systems.

DC nanogrids and microgrids are the future because you and I can understand how they work.

They are also better because solar, batteries and all electronic devices run on DC and DC grids have fewer components and are more efficient.