Roland Perry wrote:
I'm no expert on small factories, really, so I'm not sure. But I'm not
sure what difference that makes because if you plonk a small factory
where every carpark is, you've got a vastly changed energy landscape
anyway.

No-one is suggesting replacing car parks with factories.

I realise that: I'm just again uncertain about where this small
factory comparison is useful. It probably consumes about as much power
as emitted by a certain weight of rotting haddock, with or without a
dropped zero! What I'm wondering at is the purpose of the
comparison. My best guess at the moment from reading the thread is
that it was introduced to say "not so much electricity": that a car
park wouldn't consume such a large quantity of electricity, no more
than a small factory. So as we'd need one in most car parks that
extends to "wiring carparks wouldn't consume so much, no more than if
they were small factories": the comparison extendeing only to power
consumption. And then I imagine a power engineer standing on a hill
overlooking a city full of small factories (like a Sheffield of yore)
and I can see that they'd see a power landscape which was quite
intimidating, SO a power landscape of wired carparks would be
similarly intimidating.

So we drive more than 5 miles a day in an electric car

That seems like a bit of a pointless occupation to me.

What, driving only 5 miles a day?

Why electric cars? Electricity is an inefficient, but flexible energy
transmission medium. I always think it best not to think of it as a
power source, but a really cunning drive shaft type system. So having
an electric car would mean that we can have cars powered by what? We
surely need to concentrate on getting our existing demands for things
which are very difficult to run on other fuels supplied renewably
first? Doubling or tripling demand for something you're still not sure
how to supply is a bit silly?

Dan.