Someone posted something about a power company building battery substations to handle increasing demands. IIRC, the idea is that excess electricity produced overnight will be used to charge the batteries which will then be used the next day to supply more electricity when it's needed.
I hope the above is reasonably clear.
Uh huh. And I suppose there will be one at my house?
Oh, BTW, I can get you a great deal on some prime Florida swamp..er...real estate.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1941827/postsToshiba's building a "Micro Nuclear" reactor for your garage? Alright, details are slim, and we really have no idea if Toshiba has any plans whatsoever to sell these nuclear reactors to consumers -- in fact, we hope it doesn't -- but it does seem like the company is well on its way to commercializing the design. Toshiba's Micro Nuclear reactors are designed to power a single apartment building or city block, and measure a mere 20-feet by 6-feet. The 200 kilowatt reactor is fully automatic and fail-safe, and is completely self-sustaining. It uses special liquid lithium-6 reservoirs instead of traditional control rods, and can last up to 40 years, making energy for about 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Toshiba has been testing the reactors since 2005, and hopes to install its first reactor in Japan in 2008, with marketing to Europe and America in 2009. Oh, and we lied: we totally want one of these in our garage
The mere fact that most people will drive in the daytime and charge their batteries at night should do a lot to even out the demand.
Battery substations could be used to smooth out the total demand curve to avoid the need to build or use additional peak-demand generation assets. They could also be used in modular, distributed locations to delay or obviate the need for transmission system upgrades. It might be very useful.