🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JMC.96Jan8151038@Steam.stanford.edu>, jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU wrote:

> I think Tom Gray has confirmed my point.  The storage capacity of
> electric cars will not add flexibility to the system, because the cars
> must almost always be recharged at their convenience rather than at
> the convenience of the grid operator.
> 
> Admittedly if your car were discharged and you weren't going to use it
> for (say) 24 hours, you could put its charger in a mode that would
> charge it at a time convenient for the grid.  This is unlikely to be
> frequent enough to do much good.  If I had an electric car, I'd want
> to recharge it right away, just in case I might have to use it.

This doesn't strike me as outlandish at all.  Where I live, you can get a
discount on your electric bill by agreeing to let the electric utility
turn off your central air conditioning for up to two hours at during peak
demand.  This may not be for everyone, but it makes economic sense for the
utility to avoid the cost of additional peak power by buying the
flexibility to shed load at key times.

I'm sure that a similar arrangement could be established for EV chargers,
giving drivers a discount in exchange for occasional, minor
inconveniences.  Such arrangements should increase the economic
attractiveness of wind as part of a utility's resource mix.

> -- 
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> *
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/

-- 
Mark W. Goodman
mwgoodman@igc.apc.prg