The Best Idea Yet for Greening Campus IT

The anonymous sustainability blogger (Who is in charge of his campuses' ACUPCC work), G. Rendell, has a new idea:

Now there’s a better idea. It will take a while to work the details out and even longer to get the infrastructure in place, but it’s basically a flash of brilliance. So much of the electricity consumed on campus goes into various electronic appliances (using the term in its broadest sense). Each of them has its own, individual power converter, and the simple act of converting the AC to DC accounts for about 20-30% of the electricity used. But remember, we have to convert the power from high-voltage AC because that’s what we have available in every office.

Meanwhile, campuses are installing solar arrays and wind turbines and other means of generating electricity. Solar panels generate low-voltage DC, which has to be converted to high-voltage AC before it can get fed into the campus electrical network. Wind turbines can generate AC or DC equally well, but the more voltage they’re required to generate, the more wind you need. (See where this is going?)

Why not have a separate electrical network across campus, which delivers appropriate low-voltage DC to offices and (maybe) residence halls. There’d need to be standards worked out, but even if some voltage step-up or step-down were required some of the time, the losses would be far less than in the AC-to-DC scenario we’re now facing. And campuses are locales where a separate network could (relatively) easily be installed. And DC could be generated effectively and efficiently on more campuses than can AC. And the DC network could include significant power storage to smooth out the power available, as well as a (centrally converted, larger scale hence more efficient) feed from the electrical grid to assure power availability even at the end of long stretches of sunless, windless days and nights.