On 10 Apr, 17:05, Andy Dingley wrote:
On 10 Apr, 15:52, Phil wrote:

If you wanted to go off-grid, what I am saying is that you should
consider designing your house & appliances from the outset to use only
12vdc.

Why only 12V? Go DC by all means, but 48V is easy and even "mains
voltage" DC systems with battery backup are practical, so long as you
know what you're doing ("mains" switches don't like breaking a DC
load). Distributing any sort of useful power at low voltages gets
difficult from the high current, extra losses and extra cabling costs.

If you really are going for Hobbit-technology and building the lot
from recycled car batteries, but a separate battery and automatic
charger into each light fitting and keep the premises wiring at 240V
AC from the genset. *You'd be using a bunch of batteries anyway, the
wiring costs make it sensible to distribute them close to the loads.

12vdc because of the range of items that already use it, with careful
choice. As I said, my idea was to plan the entire house wiring from
scratch to cope, not to retrofit to cope with the OTT loads we all
have now; ie./ it wouldn't necessarily be a 1:1 functional
replacement.

Phil.