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pluggable hybrids save the grid

According to Monbiot, anyway, it's actually a hugely complex challenge to maintain a stable grid, which may be a challenge for those wanting to do distributed power.

Pluggable hybrids seems to be an interesting, err, hybrid approach.

Technology Review - How Plug-In Hybrids Will Save the Grid - December 21, 2006

via TreeHugger

Daily Kos - You Have The Power - December 24, 2006

If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

One of the challenges for the power system is the surge effect - everyone arrives at work and turns their computers on, everyone arrives at home and turns the TV on - as luck would have it, their hybrid cars would all get plugged back into the system just before. So: low demand = push electricity into hybrids, high-demand = pull from hybrids.

If you add solar-boosted charging in appropriate areas, using e.g. solar trees in parking lots, things start to look better and better. posted by Richard at 06:39 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)