Date:         Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:12:12 -0400
Reply-To:     Ron Tipton <uther@DRAGONHOME.ORG>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Ron Tipton <uther@DRAGONHOME.ORG>
Subject:      Re: 500 miles per gallon
Comments: To: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <71d9cdf90806161536h48a080d2wcd8c4420e0b8267f@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

On Jun 16, 2008, at 6:36 PM, Jake de Villiers wrote:

> And what do you think the price of electricity is going to do when
> you plug
> a million cars into the grid overnight?!

actually, not much.  for two reasons.  first and by far the most
important is that
electricity isn't like gas or oil or water.  with those, you have a
certain amount,
store what you're not currently using and sell in the future.

electricity isn't stored or saved.  it is used or discarded as it is
generated.  and
the generation process takes days or weeks to start up.  and so
utilities have
to have the on-line capacity to generate the maximum amount of
electricity
they will ever need.  now this is mitigated somewhat by the various
grids we
now have, but in general that's how it works.

and since most electricity is used durning the day time, for most of
the night
utilities are discarding electricity... which could be used to charge
millions
of cars overnight with NO new capacity needed.

the second reason is that the load of adding a million cars is a drop
in the
bucket.

r


Ron Tipton
uther@dragonhome.org

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