Terry Blanton wrote:
> think it is around 80%.) What it boils down to is that with electric cars,
> we could have millions of nuclear powered automobiles, with no change to
> the present infrastructure.
Unfortunately, this would likely not be the case without some
incentives. Most people would pull into their garage and plug in their
charger thus adding to the peak load in the summer. They would need an
incentive to plug in before going to bed.
That should not be hard to fix. The Prius already has a sophisticated
computer with many options and a touch screen. You would set up the plug-in
hybrid like a dishwashing machine which runs automatically overnight with a
timer. You might add a question like this to the set-up:
"When car is plugged in after 6 p.m., recharge 1. Immediately or 2.
Overnight." [Default: 2]
This option can be overruled on a one-time basis. For example, you visit a
friend's house at night, and you plan to drive home again at 10:00 p.m. You
plug the car in. This question pops up on the control screen. Instead of
letting it wait until the wee hours of the morning, you touch "1.
Immediately" and it starts to recharge.
Alternatively, perhaps you plug the car into a special external box with a
waterproof heavy-duty power supply, like the one used for an outdoor
air-conditioner unit. The box would have similar buttons on it: RECHARGE
NOW and RECHARGE OVERNIGHT.
The kind of people who would buy these cars at first would be conscientious
and they would often select RECHARGE OVERNIGHT even if their power meters
did not give them a discount for night electricity. Later on, when there
are tens of millions of these cars, intelligent power meters would become
common, and this would provide an economic incentive to select off-hours
charging.
- Jed
