naa, naa, naa poo poo, I know you are but what am I....

Off-peak meters, sure, but I thought the "smart meters" were read-only. Though, it makes sense to be able to shut off deadbeats remotely, too.

through a

Hmmmph. I don't need anything nearly that high voltage. Let's see, the hose is about 1-1/2 inches to 2 inches. That can easily handle 4800 V = and

2000 A for short terms (minutes) with equal time rest periods. That is pretty near 10 MVA. The GM magnetic paddle can handle at least 1000 kVA, the problem lies with the battery charging at well over 100 C. Not going to happen any time soon. The current realistic limit use is 6 minutes charging per hour of use (10 c). Cars can use 6 minutes of pumping gas and get 10 hours of use (equal to over 100 c charging & 1 c discharge to compare electric with, and battery packs that store over 100 megajoules that fit in a car). There is the target.

?-)

Seriously, the problem isn't just the 'hose' or vehicle battery. Its the high and variable demand that filling stations will place on the local power grid when they begin to approach the delivery volumes of petrol stations. To keep the peak demands down and tolerable, quite a bit of local energy storage will be required. Even more if utilities want to exploit off peak (late night) excess system capacity.

This isn't all bad. Electric utilities have done quite a bit of R&D on load leveling local energy storage. If the EV market helps attract more investment into this area, the price per kWh will come down. Better yet, local energy storage stations can do double duty, filling cars as well as providing emergency local peaking power back to the grid.

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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The immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?"

Which is a very handy thing to have, actually. It's still not nice, providing a service then turning down customers, but it's a lot better to continue supplying utility loads, which are in place and generally prefer continuous service, while turning down customers at the "pump" -- who may be only inconvenienced rather than SOL, or who can potentially locate another charge station that IS open.

I would imagine large lead-acid banks would be able to supply the intermittent charging and off-peak loads, while being recharged gradually during off-peak hours. Recharge stations would double duty as load balancing stations. And with one or two every couple of blocks as gas stations are today, you could have market competition and provide a very robust power grid.

Come to think of it, with that much storage capacity, the grid itself could be restructured. Instead of branches supplying a neighborhood, the load balance station could supply the neighborhood, somewhat independent of the grid at large; it could act as a UPS for the entire neighborhood. Which in turn has similar implications for the distribution grid, only needing to supply recharge power at will.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

local

off

load

as

Yep. Even serious megaflywheels aren't up to 100 gigajoule range. Maybe some of the phase change energy storage ideas will do the job. Then = again maybe not.

?-)