"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 23/01/14 08:25, tony sayer wrote:
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One hour recahrage times are easy, and less can be achieved with a
powerful enough charger. The real bugaboo is simply battery energy
density and cost. Nickel and lead are hopeless, lithoium ion is barely
acceptable for short haul.

Only Li-air has a cats chance in hell. And it would do the job if we
knew how to make it.

All very interesting but one issue remains where is all this power going
to come from?.

Daily we look at Gridwatch to see what might be going off when it gets
to 55 odd GW so what's it going to be with all this extra demand even if
it is going to be overnight?..

Can the distribution system cope for one?..

Not the existing one, no.

I calculate a 3:1 upsized grid by say 2080 would run a nuclear electric
Britain of *approximately the same population as now*.

Its a difficult sum because although we have easy figures for the total
energy the country uses, we don't know at what efficiency it uses it.

But you can put a rough figure in the 30% or so used for transport, and
say that its about 350% efficient so represents 10% of the total in terms
of shaft power out. eccentricity use at the moment is around 30% of all
energy, so that would rise to 40%

So to do that with batteries is about 30% more grid needed and motre
generating capacity.

The rest is really heating. That is what would require the greatest grid
increases - all electric heating.


Just a load of bollix.
There are too many unknowns to come to any conclusions at all.

Some people would charge their cars by night (at an unknown rate.)
Some would charge them from renewable sources.

And a whole lot of people won't be driving any more.
Public transport will make a big come back
And more people will work from home.
And shop from home.