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That many cars seem undesirable in urban areas (or anywhere, really, but let's not go there). From a bit of quick searching, EV battery packs are roughly the s
by elric 5y ago
That many cars seem undesirable in urban areas (or anywhere, really, but let's not go there).
From a bit of quick searching, EV battery packs are roughly the same volume as a fridge, and weigh in around 300kg (that was a Nissan Leaf specifically, but I assume others are similar). I don't have enough room for a fridge sized battery in my house. It'd be nice if they could shrink a bit. With enough capacity to run a tankless water heater for the duration of a nice, hot shower. The battery can charge slowly whenever power is abundant.
The grid doesn't care about running a bunch of laptops. But a bunch of tankless water heaters quickly add up. Having a local buffer really makes sense there.
- BizarroLand 5y agoOn the other hand, if every home had a load leveling battery system of even modest storage capacity, say, 15 minutes average power usage covered, then load leveling would not be nearly the problem it is today.
- elric 5y agoYou're probably right. Something like a small battery per home, and a bigger battery per block would likely go a very long way in creating a more stable grid. That's probably cheaper than "real" grid scale storage. What would a 15 minute battery look like? Probably not much bigger than a car battery. Install one with every power meter. Sounds so easy that I can't help but wonder what the catch is. Why aren't we doing this?