Second step to full DC-potential: DC grid efficiency for Home Owners Associations

The Energy Agreement for Sustainable Growth (2013, Social and Economic Council) is a long term policy perspective, to bind a sustainable energy supply to sustainable economic growth in the Netherlands. In this agreement, two major targets are directly related to energy. Firstly, an annual saving in final energy consumption of 1,5% is to be achieved, resulting in a saving of 100 PetaJoule by 2020. Secondly, sustainable generation needs to grow from 4,4% (2013) to 16% (2020) of all generated energy. The Dutch initiated an educational programme ´DC; Road to its full potential´ and conducted international research studies into the feasibility of DC-Grids for residential and commercial areas. Results from these earlier studies indicated a potential saving up to 7.5 % when implementing a 350 V DC Grid in a single household, compared to the present-day 230 V AC household grid. This paper sets out to present a new comparison. The DC-Grid-model is expanded to the street in two different setups. The study compares households with a DC-DC converter per household to households with a centralized DC-DC converter. Several scenarios indicate a centralized setup is to be preferred over decentralized DC-DC converters, especially when centralized renewable energy sources are used. Parameters used for setting up the simulations are evaluated to better value the outcome of these experiments.