The Driven website posted ‘why electric cars may be smarter choice than home batteries’ on March 16, 2020. They posed the question in the context of the energy situation in New South Wales, Australia. However what they found is relevant to North America too. So are electric cars smarter than home batteries, do you think?
Expert Believes Electric Cars Are Smarter than Home Batteries
Chris Dunstan was a research director at Institute of Sustainable Futures at University of Technology in Sydney. He is, however, moving across to take over the helm at Reliable Affordable Clean Energy for 2030. RACE for 2030 is an industry-led cooperative research center driving initiative across the supply chain.
There’s no doubt in Chris Dunstan’s mind that electric vehicles will play a significant role in RACE for 2030. He believes time is approaching when consumers will compare benefits between home batteries and electric cars and choose the latter. Electric cars are smarter than home batteries he explains because they provide more storage for a greener future.
EV’s Will Make Transitioning to Green Energy Smoother
Transitioning from fossil to renewable energies should be taken one step at a time with sufficient spare reserve available. Distributed, independent supplies are ideal because if one trips, the impact on supply is low. Consumers should feel the benefits as soon as possible to ease the transition.
Just over a million new cars sold in Australia in 2019. If consumers purchased 500,000 electric vehicles in 2020, and each made 10 kWh available to the grid that would equal 5GW capacity. This equates to 5,000 megawatts. By comparison, the three units at America’s Palo Verde nuclear generating station have a combined design capacity of 3,937 megawatts.
Palo Verde cost $11.7 billion in 2018 dollars. By comparison, there’s little additional cost attached to storing surplus renewable energy in electric cars during off peak periods. Electric cars are therefore the better choice, says Chris Dunstan because there is such a compelling case.
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