If someone would be willing to EL5 this for me, I’d be deeply appreciative.
Almost everything is powered by AC. The things that actually work on DC like electronics, have power adapters to convert AC into DC for the device, like the little brick that comes with your laptop or phone charger.
There are rare exceptions, but EILI5 doesn’t care about those.
If you have examples, we could clarify.
This is going to sound exceedingly lame, but the foremost example is a box fan. I sleep with a fan at night and if there’s ever an outage I just want to be able to plug it in and go back to sleep.
The other use case for me would just be consumer electronics: tablet, laptop, phone.
All AC plugs.
Anything that you plug into a household power outlet is designed for ac. If it plugs in directly to usb it’s dc
You can use DC for electronics like a phone. You just remove the wall plug portion and use the cable by itself. This should help conserve power since you aren’t converting AC into DC, but if thats not a concern, you can use either.
Even at ELI5, I’d nuance this. Big things like fridges and washing machines use AC, most small things like phones and laptops use DC, and have to have the AC that comes out of our wall sockets converted to DC before they can use it. This wastes a bit of energy. If you can, run small appliances straight from DC to avoid those conversion losses
if you’re running off a battery bank, then run as much DC as you can. if a generator, AC.
It’s a little 600W emergency power supply, not a generator.
use as much DC as you can
Changing power types is inefficient.
Batteries (which is what your emergency power supply uses) and solar panels are DC. They will be most efficient powering other DC devices directly.
Rotating generators (powered by engines, turbines, wind, anything that creates movement through motion pretty much) are AC. They will be most efficient at powering AC devices directly.
As soon as you’re changing DC into AC, or AC into DC, you’re losing power (usually a quite significant amount) in the conversion process. DC->AC requires an inverter. AC->DC requires a rectifier. Both are inefficient.
The direct answer to your question is that your DC power bank will be most efficient powering DC devices, and less efficient powering AC devices.
I have never seen a consumer product that has a 2 or 3 prong plug that expects DC on that plug.
aka
Anything with a 2 or 3 prong plug, as in, anything that plugs into your wall of your house, that will want AC. If the device is powered by like, a USB cable, that’s going to be DC.
° Power is almost always stored on DC batteries.
° Converting (DC to AC, or/and AC to DC) makes you lose about 20-30% of your capacity
= Use as much DC as possible!
if you want to charge a phone from a power station. Use the USB or DC ports that is has. This can save you 20%+20% (battery DC to AC and back to phones DC)
Don’t charge a power bank, to charge a phone. Every converting step takes a bite out of your capacity
But basically all big or motor/compressor appliances run on AC and changing them to DC requires skill and time and money. Although doable for me, I would not recommend this to anyone without them having an Electrical Engineering degree
