**Author details**

*Micro-Grids - Applications, Operation, Control and Protection*

or compressors for refrigerators and air conditioning systems.

systems designed for residential applications.

can be established by using adequate protection devices.

power factor correction stages.

consumer.

voltage levels.

**Acknowledgements**

PNCDI III.

Innovation (MCI).

**Conflict of interest**

conflicts of interest to disclose.

regulation. These devices can be easily modified by eliminating the rectifying and

Most switching mode power sources are already very efficient even with DC/ AC conversion module included. Therefore, imposing a different power grid supply for households must be justified especially by the advantages related to the energy production and distribution stages and less by the aspects which regard the final

It can be concluded that modifying switching home appliances to DC power configurations can be achieved without any significant problems or at significant costs. The transition is easier when using new equipment that mainly embeds switching power supplies or *Inverter* technology to drive washing machine motors

Older generation equipment that still uses transformers or AC motors require more significant changes of the power sources or the use of DC/AC converters. The lack of both commercially available electronic devices and systems, and their required standards and regulations, is a major challenge that hinders the rapid development of this field. Currently, it is difficult to identify converters, fuses, or chargers which are necessary for the implementation of DC systems as well as to design and implement a DC microgrid, especially when operating at different

Moreover, potential users do not yet have access to home appliances provided with DC power options. In terms of developing standards, several international organizations such as Emerge Alliance, ETSI-IEC, and IEEE are taking steps in order to establish regulations which are needed for the implementation of DC

Even though the DC grid system protection is more difficult to be achieved than in the case of AC systems, a corresponding selection of a grounding configuration

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation, CCCDI-UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.2-PCCDI-2017-0391/ CIA\_CLIM—Smart buildings adaptable to the climate change effects, within

Also, the authors acknowledge the financial support of MCI through the contracts no. 35N/2018 and 30PFE/2018 between the National R&D Institute for Electrical Engineering ICPE-CA and Romanian Ministry of Research and

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest. Thus, there are no

**56**

Lucia-Andreea El-Leathey National Institute for Research and Development in Electrical Engineering ICPE-CA, Bucharest, Romania

\*Address all correspondence to: andreea.elleathey@icpe-ca.ro

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
