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RE: Shananigans
By Solandri on 9/27/2011 3:47:07 PM , Rating: 3
Electricity is pretty much the best (most efficient, cheapest) form we have for generating and transmitting energy. The problem with electricity in transportation and mobile applications is that it's very expensive to store.

Two AA batteries which cost you $0.80 at Costco hold about 0.1 cents worth of electricity. That is, 0.12% of the money you're shelling out is for the electricity, 99.88% is for the container used to store the electricity. Your laptop battery that costs $50 to replace? About half a cent to 1 cent worth of electricity. The half dozen car batteries to power an electric golf cart? About $1 worth of electricity. The 600 lb battery on the Nissan Leaf which gets you 70 miles according to the EPA? $2.88 worth of electricity (ignoring charging losses).

So you can see why if at all possible, devices are powered by plugging in rather than using batteries.

And I agree with you, transitioning to electric vehicles is going to drive electricity use way up. It shouldn't dramatically impact rates initially though, as most of the increased usage is going to be during evening and night, when we currently have lots of excess generation capacity.

