That many cars seem undesirable in urban areas (or anywhere, really, but let's not go there).
From a bit of quick searching, EV battery packs are roughly the same volume as a fridge, and weigh in around 300kg (that was a Nissan Leaf specifically, but I assume others are similar). I don't have enough room for a fridge sized battery in my house. It'd be nice if they could shrink a bit. With enough capacity to run a tankless water heater for the duration of a nice, hot shower. The battery can charge slowly whenever power is abundant.
The grid doesn't care about running a bunch of laptops. But a bunch of tankless water heaters quickly add up. Having a local buffer really makes sense there.
On the other hand, if every home had a load leveling battery system of even modest storage capacity, say, 15 minutes average power usage covered, then load leveling would not be nearly the problem it is today.
You're probably right. Something like a small battery per home, and a bigger battery per block would likely go a very long way in creating a more stable grid. That's probably cheaper than "real" grid scale storage. What would a 15 minute battery look like? Probably not much bigger than a car battery. Install one with every power meter. Sounds so easy that I can't help but wonder what the catch is. Why aren't we doing this?
From a bit of quick searching, EV battery packs are roughly the same volume as a fridge, and weigh in around 300kg (that was a Nissan Leaf specifically, but I assume others are similar). I don't have enough room for a fridge sized battery in my house. It'd be nice if they could shrink a bit. With enough capacity to run a tankless water heater for the duration of a nice, hot shower. The battery can charge slowly whenever power is abundant.
The grid doesn't care about running a bunch of laptops. But a bunch of tankless water heaters quickly add up. Having a local buffer really makes sense there.