The dawn of the age of electrification in the late 19th century saw a standoff between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Edison promoted Direct Current (DC). Westinghouse swore by Alternating Current (AC). As the two electricity magnates disparaged each other’s technology as inferior and unsafe, the confrontation escalated into the War of the Currents.

Westinghouse emerged victorious, and the world’s power grids were built on Alternating Current. But the paradigm of electricity generation, distribution and consumption is changing rapidly.

Solar PV, the dominant and fastest-growing renewable energy source, produces direct current. The batteries that store the sun’s energy for later use operate on direct current. So does your electric car or bike. All of Silicon Valley, trillions of dollars of wealth, were built on chips running on direct current. 

Paradoxically, most of today’s home solar+battery systems first convert DC to AC in order to connect the solar array to the main electrical panel, and then back to DC before the energy is fed into the battery system. Sounds inefficient? It sure is!

By contrast, YouSolar PowerBloc’s all-DC architecture eliminates these complexities and inefficiencies. Thomas Edison was right after all.

AC/DC Power Electronics. Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology 

Important players are throwing their support behind DC power. One of them is the German Fraunhofer Society, a globally renowned network of institutes for applied research. It files hundreds of patents per year and has created over 150 spin-off companies.

Fraunhofer’s Intelligent Energy Systems research division focuses on DC Grids as one of its five main research areas. In its brief about the topic, Fraunhofer writes the following:

“The massive expansion of renewable energy sources will involve a wealth of change in the electrical energy supply.

An important aspect arises from the transition from a centralized to a highly decentralized supply system.

For reducing system costs and achieving the highest efficiency in providing electric energy, DC-based systems and grids will play key roles in the future.

This is due to the intrinsic DC characteristic of the main elements, like photovoltaic generators and electrical energy storages, and the elimination of many inefficient DC-to-AC and AC-to-DC conversion steps in the case of direct supply of a large number of electronic loads.”

Fraunhofer validates our thesis and our pioneering work in parallel direct current power systems. There is a reason we call the PowerBloc the Ultimate Solar Battery.