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This is a good driver for tech. It makes sense for everyone to have their own battery at home to be like a google server ups... Distributed is far more reliabl

by ballard 12y ago

This is a good driver for tech. It makes sense for everyone to have their own battery at home to be like a google server ups... Distributed is far more reliable than centralized. Heck the power grid wouldn't even have to be 24/7 anymore if it could handle both the peak current and deliver enough average power.

Sanddancer 12y ago
Electricity is an area where centralized is much more efficient and reliable, due to the economies of scale when dealing with larger load infrastructures. However, batteries close to the end point could definitely a useful thing, because the grid does work better when there is a constant load. It's easier to plan for both day-to-day activities, and if a plant does need to go down for emergency maintenance.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  It's not just economies of scale, but laws of large numbers. Existing grids have benefited from the fact that though any given individual demand rate might vary widely, averaged over a large number of consumers, trends are far more predictable. On the generating side this hasn't typically been as much of an issue, with highly reliable and dispatchable generating plants. With intermittent renewable/sustainable sources, the fact that local variations in solar or wind capacity can be mitigate by transmitting surpluses, or importing necessary capacity, also helps. In an advanced grid with attached storage, again, large-number averaging should, with effective management, help balance supply and demand. Trying to do this at the scale of individual households means far more variability which must be dealt with on he immediate premises. This is among the reasons I strongly doubt that visions of a "gridless future" will emerge, at least so long as there's not widespread collapse of all social and technical infrastructure.
  - ballard 12y ago
    Large battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. It would be an adjunct at most, definitely not a replacement because it would be temporary storage. Further, any new tech never replaces the previous completely (just look at DC-power grid for elevators in SF. Records, 8-tracks still exist in a post CD world.)
  - ballard 12y ago
    Large battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. That might reduce costs and wear/tear on infrastructure.
  - ballard 12y ago
    Distributed battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. That might reduce costs and wear/tear on infrastructure.
  - ballard 12y ago
    Distributed battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. That might reduce costs and wear/tear on infrastructure.

by ballard 12y ago

Sanddancer 12y ago

Electricity is an area where centralized is much more efficient and reliable, due to the economies of scale when dealing with larger load infrastructures. However, batteries close to the end point could definitely a useful thing, because the grid does work better when there is a constant load. It's easier to plan for both day-to-day activities, and if a plant does need to go down for emergency maintenance.

dredmorbius 12y ago
It's not just economies of scale, but laws of large numbers. Existing grids have benefited from the fact that though any given individual demand rate might vary widely, averaged over a large number of consumers, trends are far more predictable. On the generating side this hasn't typically been as much of an issue, with highly reliable and dispatchable generating plants. With intermittent renewable/sustainable sources, the fact that local variations in solar or wind capacity can be mitigate by transmitting surpluses, or importing necessary capacity, also helps. In an advanced grid with attached storage, again, large-number averaging should, with effective management, help balance supply and demand. Trying to do this at the scale of individual households means far more variability which must be dealt with on he immediate premises. This is among the reasons I strongly doubt that visions of a "gridless future" will emerge, at least so long as there's not widespread collapse of all social and technical infrastructure.
- ballard 12y ago
  Large battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. It would be an adjunct at most, definitely not a replacement because it would be temporary storage. Further, any new tech never replaces the previous completely (just look at DC-power grid for elevators in SF. Records, 8-tracks still exist in a post CD world.)
- ballard 12y ago
  Large battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. That might reduce costs and wear/tear on infrastructure.
- ballard 12y ago
  Distributed battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. That might reduce costs and wear/tear on infrastructure.
- ballard 12y ago
  Distributed battery banks would allow demand to "debounced" (smoothed) such that load could be much flatter and more predictable. That might reduce costs and wear/tear on infrastructure.