Re: Some questions I got from a listener by email

I'm curious about the difference between the US and Canadian grid. Why such a difference?

In my comment about battery powered vehicles I mentioned that the efficiency goes down significantly if charged from the grid. Using widely deployed battery powered powered vehicles to store and make available energy from renewable sources, vehicle to grid (V2G), not only makes the vehicles more efficient but also helps to solve the problems of intermittency from renewables. Zero Carbon Britain estimates, and recommends, that if the entire fleet were replaced with electric cars using V2G technology, 27 million vehicles with capacity of 50kWh, a storage capacity of 1.65 TWh could be added to the grid, 1.6x the daily household electricity use in Britain. Cars in Britain are used on average 1 hour/day, the rest of the time they would be hooked to the grid. Until the time when that technology is large enough to make a difference I'm of the opinion that electric vehicles should be charged from dedicated renewable sources whenever possible.