2 ms·
In theory, if you can pair generation and consumption more locally (such as a solar roof powering the car sitting under it), transmission costs can drop as well
by gregable 8y ago
In theory, if you can pair generation and consumption more locally (such as a solar roof powering the car sitting under it), transmission costs can drop as well.
In the small scale, producing infrastructure that can bill your meter going both ways only increases the cost.
But in the large scale, not having to build and maintain more high-power distribution towers across hundreds of miles of difficult to access terrain decreases cost.
- icebraining 8y agoI'm a layman, but renewables only seem to me to make that worse, not better. You can't plop down a coal plant in a city, but you still have some freedom to choose its location, and you can scale it to the needs of the local area and just burn as much as you need. Meanwhile, solar and wind might go way down for a whole day or more, and so you need to ship energy from where it's being generated.
- gregable 8y agoRenewables do make for more intermittent supplies of power. However EVs have the potential to smooth that out. Charging speeds across a city can float somewhat with available power and most consumers will not care or even notice. At some point those cars can actually be part of the grid's storage capacity, if the infrastructure is built to allow the car to put some of it's capacity back onto the grid during low availability. EV drivers willing to have 20% of their battery be drained when they need to drive can get paid a small amount for leaving their vehicle plugged in while not in use.