On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 10:39:26 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 12:18:30 PM UTC-4, Steve Koerner wrote:
Go ask your electrical utility for a price quote on that sort of connection...

Well Moshe, when the supercapacitors become workable in cars, why wouldn't they also become workable for buffering at the filling station? Megawatt connections won't be the issue.

You'd need a heck of a lot of those supercapacitors. The reason they are being talked about in cars is to provide acceleration or regeneration for a few seconds, a small amount of energy relative to what's stored in the main battery. Sort of like a now-old-hat "hybrid" car uses the battery for short-term acceleration and regeneration while the gasoline tank stores most of the energy. The supercaps have a much lower energy storage density, and much higher price per energy unit, relative to batteries. Also, at a "filling station" you'd want to allow one car to fill-er-up after the other, not much time for buffering. So you'd still need megawatts of supply. That's actually perhaps economically feasible at a dedicated filling station, but not at home.

Makes sense. I've not looked at numbers. It's fun to read the tidbits in Gliding International about carbon nanotube materials and super dense battery technology -- even if it's mostly fictional and none of it will come to light. Numbers just spoil the fun. I'd rather continue to contemplate supercapacitors that will be tiny and cheap and hold enormous energy.