Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Don't know about power bills. That depends on whether the power company is able to pass on the cost to the owners of the chargers, or has to spread it out over the whole customer base.
The real problem is the technical one of system stability. Simplistically, everything in a power has to run at the same frequency (60 Hz in the US). The grid has inertia, both in the rotating mass of generators and the electrical equivalent, but this has limits. Suddenly dumping too much of a load at one point of the grid can drag down its frequency, causing it to destabilize and disconnect from the rest of the grid. Worst case, the instability can propagate, bringing down the whole grid.
Seems like a good way to deal with this would be to use flywheel storage, since that has built-in inertia, and doesn't need inverters to go from DC to AC, like batteries or capacitors.
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During the heyday of flywheel R&D,it was found that a bearing failure could cause the flywheel to seize and uproot it's enclosure,taking off like a spastic missile,ricocheting off random surfaces until all the kinetic energy was spent.
Completely uncontrollable.