Design of DC Wirings for Urban House in Indonesia Including Analysis on Appliances, Power Losses, and Costs: An alternative to Support Rooftop PV Uptake

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Udayana, Jl. Raya Kampus Unud No 88, Denpasar 80361, Bali, Indonesia
² Discipline of Engineering and Energy, College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education, Murdoch University, 90 South Street, Murdoch, 6150 Western Australia
³ Dept. of Electronics Engineering, National Polytechnique of Denpasar, Jl. Pandu No 9, Denpasar 80239, Bali, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: satya.kumara@unud.ac.id

Abstract

Most of the application of solar PV in Indonesia uses inverter, which is a complex and expensive electronics system. Many of the PV plants are in fault condition due to the failure of the inverter. This paper proposed DC wirings powered by solar PV for houses in the urban area of Indonesia. First, the paper reviewed the availability of electrical appliances powered by DC voltage supply. Secondly, it presents AC and DC house wiring designs for a house with 1 300 VA electrical power limit. Losses of both wirings are analyzed and compared, including the cost of wirings materials. The survey showed appliances such as air conditioning, fridgefreezer, television, washing machine, and other appliances are now available in DC voltage supply. A 48 V DC bus is chosen to minimize losses. From a cost perspective, AC and DC wiring systems are comparable, but the DC house is slightly more expensive due to the cost of appliances. The cost of DC wirings is lower due to the lower cost of the DC-DC converters and uses fewer conductors. The results provide an alternative to using solar PV directly distributed as DC voltage for the houses in the urban area of the country.