Yes, AC/DC the band are in fact named after AC/DC (Alternating Current / Direct Current), since Malcolm and Angus Young felt that this name symbolised the band’s raw energy, power-driven performances of their music.

For folk considering installing solar panels and battery storage, the terms AC / DC are important to become familiar with.

AC stands for ALTERNATING CURRENT and DC stands for DIRECT CURRENT

Back to basics

Ok, so it turns out we need to first understand Voltage, Current and Resistance to grasp AC/DC.

If you recall your physics lessons from school, V = IR, where V is Voltage, I is Current and R is resistance. This formula is known as Ohm’s law.

Voltage is the pressure from an electrical circuit’s power source (eg. a battery) that pushes charged electrons (current) through a conducting loop, enabling them to do work such as illuminating a light. The higher the voltage the greater the driving force.

Voltage = pressure, and it is measured in volts (V). The term recognizes Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827).

So what is current? Current is the rate at which electrons flow past a point in a complete electrical circuit. At its most basic, current = the flow of electric charge. In order for electric current to flow through a circuit, a battery or some other “source of potential difference” must be included. Current is measured in Amps.

The electrons flow from the negative terminal through the circuit into the positive terminal. This is indicated by the direction arrows in the diagram above.

This is a key feature of Direct Current (DC). In DC circuits the current always flows in the same direction.

Resistance is the difficulty that the current has in passing through an element in the circuit. In the diagram above, resistance is offered by the bulb. Resistance is measured in Ohms.

So what is Alternating Current?

AC is used in your home. Alternating Current is a flow of electric charge that periodically reverses.

“what does that mean?”

So the current literally changes direction. In the UK the AC current changes direction 50 times per second – hence we have the term “50 Hertz“. In the USA, AC current operates at 60 Hertz. This is why you can’t just buy an electronic device in the USA and use it here in the UK – because the device is specified to work at a different current.

The key reason we use AC in the home rather than DC is that we are able to transmit power over large distances without a great loss of energy to resistance. If our electricity is subject to resistance, it is lost as heat energy during the transmission process.

The way to maximise the power output is to reduce the current and increase the voltage.

This is because Power = Current x Voltage.

So to put this another way, you can receive more power down a transmission cable if you increase the voltage and reduce the current, because you lose less power enroute to heat loss in the cable itself.

By using step up & step down transformers, we can easily change the voltage. And so what we have are transformers on the grid at various points which step up & step down the voltage. On the high power national grid, voltage is up to 400,000 Volts, whereas in your home the voltage is 230 Volts. This schematic shows very simply how this works.

In summary then, your solar panels and your home storage battery use DC, whereas your house and the wider grid all use AC. We use an inverter to convert the power from DC into AC, and vice versa.

Let Brimstone Energy be your guide through the Green Energy Transition.