I’ve seen estimates that if every car in America were run on electricity, it would add about 30% to our current electricity use.
It would require some planning but would not collapse the grid. If they can acually produce this product at a reasonable price, the result will be a more stable grid.
The biggest problem the power companies have is adjusting to the constantly changing power needs. Either large banks of these things at substations or a more widely dispersed system would allow the big plants to churn away at full capacity with the storage units covering peak demand and soaking up excess capacity.
Something like this would also make wind power practical. There is enough wind power in my state to power a quarter of the country. The problem is that you either have too much wind or too little. Electricity is a commodity, power distributers buy megawatt hour futures to be delivered at a certain time, wind cannot be sold on the futres market and is worth alot less on the open market. Statistically, you know how much power you will make from wind each month but not how much you will make day to day. If you could cheaply store electricity, wind power becomes a reliable commodity, you can sell futures, produce reliable income streams which allows you to find financing to build more power generation.
Suddenly, the free market kicks in and the market fills the need.
Don’t let the eco weanies scare you. We have plenty of energy resources, we just need the technology to unlock them.