The simple answer is your home is AC and your appliances are DC.

Most modern household appliances and consumer electronics use microchips and work on 12V or Low Voltage DC. Only a few heating or cooling appliances in bigger homes may consume higher power but they are DC as well.

From your laptop, PC, LCD TV, home lights, to your aircon, stereo, satellite TV dish, mobile phone, microwaves… you name it – they all use Direct Current (DC) electricity.

To use the power generated from the sockets (AC) in your home, devices today contain a converter that takes the outlets’ AC power and converts it back to DC.

Solar panels generate DC. So if you have a solar panel on your roof and you are channelling that energy back to your home with an AC Inverter, you are essentially generating solar DC, converting that solar DC power to AC, sending it to your home, and then converting it AGAIN back to DC for use on your appliance.

Seems INEFFICIENT?! That’s because it is!