New (Flow) Battery Design Could Help Solar and Wind Energy Power the Grid

[BlueStreak]

8. Regarding the third area

I believe you are talking about the "near end points' (so to speak) of the power grid. That is where one user can momentarily suck enough juice to drop the voltage of other nearby subscribers.

But I still don't see how depending on cars being plugged in is a smart architecture. Not only is it a hostile act to take precious electrons out of my car battery, if several of us happen not to be plugged in at that moment, it seems like that whole premise falls apart.

In the end, I expect that power companies will deploy their own batteries in these situations, just like they manage their own transformers. And technologies like "flow" batteries would seem to be orders of magnitude more scalable and economical than car batteries, and also accept a far faster and deeper charge/discharge cycles. They have a lot of space and weight, so that would not work in a vehicle, but that is no problem sitting at a power substation.

The bottom line, as I see it, is that EVs are nowhere near being commercially viable at this point. And they can only inch their way toward viability with batteries that are highly optimized for the job of powering a car. This is an entirely different set of properties from what the grid needs. If there were one perfect battery that was optimal for all applications, then maybe I could see this concept better, but that is not where batteries are today and I don't believe that is where they will be 10 years from now.

Moreover, there is a serious question whether battery-powered cars will ever be all that common. We seem to be not many years away from economical fuel cells, and that might overtake the Leafs and Teslas of the world. If that happens, this power grid concept just won't develop.