Charging at work seems like the thing to do. Not only is there excess solar energy at that time, but workplaces are more concentrated than homes so the installation costs for chargers should be less.
Yeah, I mean if you really think about it, this sort of concept would still work very well.
If everyone has an electric car and that car is always plugged in when not in use, regardless of where you are, then car batteries are only out of grid use while they're being driven.
The electrical grid must be such a difficult thing to manage, even with cars acting as local grid storage we'd need supplemental neighbourhood/regional storage units as well as a way to handle any unexpected peaks.
I mean I know there's the whole "Coronation Street finishes and everyone turns their kettles on" thing but imagine if at x time on x day everyone collectively did turn their kettles on - literally everyone, every single household. It would blow the grid no matter what the operators tried to do.
In a way we need grid storage in the form of batteries to enable better use of green/local energy sources, but I think it would be smart to include some sort of chemical based generation capacity with that local storage, some way for us to store energy in a solid form say, then never use it apart from very unexpected peaks where the system needs to scrabble to find more juice.
Unfortunately a lot of potential fuels are also flammable, not really the best thing to have a huge stockpile of in your neighbourhood. Maybe a huge flow battery fed by massive underground tanks, if we ever manage to improve that technology...
fennecfoxy|3 years ago
If everyone has an electric car and that car is always plugged in when not in use, regardless of where you are, then car batteries are only out of grid use while they're being driven.
The electrical grid must be such a difficult thing to manage, even with cars acting as local grid storage we'd need supplemental neighbourhood/regional storage units as well as a way to handle any unexpected peaks.
I mean I know there's the whole "Coronation Street finishes and everyone turns their kettles on" thing but imagine if at x time on x day everyone collectively did turn their kettles on - literally everyone, every single household. It would blow the grid no matter what the operators tried to do.
In a way we need grid storage in the form of batteries to enable better use of green/local energy sources, but I think it would be smart to include some sort of chemical based generation capacity with that local storage, some way for us to store energy in a solid form say, then never use it apart from very unexpected peaks where the system needs to scrabble to find more juice.
Unfortunately a lot of potential fuels are also flammable, not really the best thing to have a huge stockpile of in your neighbourhood. Maybe a huge flow battery fed by massive underground tanks, if we ever manage to improve that technology...
iso1631|3 years ago
Why can't you charge that with a 1kWh draw over 10 hours you park the car overnight?