Date of Award

6-2011

Degree Name

MS in Electrical Engineering

Department/Program

Electrical Engineering

Advisor

Taufik

Abstract

The Cal Poly DC House Project is a large scale multi-student project that involves the detailed design and eventual construction of a DC powered house that will be usable in many rural parts of the world. The large scope of such a project makes it necessary to perform studies before it is designed and constructed so that any errors or problems can be recognized early on and addressed. This thesis entails a study on DC power Distribution used for the DC house. The needs for a rural DC home were identified and loads were selected. All of the system devices then modeled in the simulink software. This includes the creation and characterization of complex devices such as DC-DC converters. Once the simulation model was completed, several steady state variables including wire size, bus voltage, and circuiting configurations were tested to create an accurate power profile of the DC system. The resulting data successfully and accurately modeled the performance of the system under many different conditions. The working model was also used to perform a design case study of several potential and realistic load configurations that could be used in rural areas.

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