Originally Posted by
myrridin
The price differential would have to be far higher than anywhere I have every seen. And yes, thermodynamics is the issue, since its fundamental laws mean that no ammount of technilogical improvment will alter the basic equation, batteries can only return less than they receive. And smoothing out the power demand does not effect the losses associated with the conversion of power to/from the battery, which are the only losses relevant to the financial equation.
The price differential seen by us (the consumer) is different than the market prices. The market prices can indeed fluctuate wildly, and even drop down to $0 in the middle of the night (
http://www.neb-one.gc.ca/clf-nsi/rnr...cndtn-eng.html). Alberta has a cap at $1000/MWhr, and we hit that this summer. That's a pretty huge differential.
If we had smart metres (or time-of-use metres), which would be required for an electric car grid scheme, prices would fluctuate much faster. Currently, most residential meters just record total usage, and the price changes monthly. In Ontario, for example, smart metres have been introduced, along with a pricing scheme that doesn't quite reflect actual market conditions, but is better than a constant rate (
http://www.energy.gov.on.ca/en/smart...nd-tou-prices/). Since the on-peak price is almost double the off-peak price, that has the potential to offset the majority of the losses due to battery charging.