ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
No, capacitors simply do not store much energy. That's why all our portable gadgets use batteries, even though caps have big advantages in other ways. Caps are sometimes used in place of (or to supplement) batteries when very low power levels are involved.
Storing enough charge for one car @ say, 50 kWh would take about 1200 F at 550V, and I see caps at around $3 for 1F @ 5.5V (so lets say $1 at large wholesale prices), that is 1200*100*$1 = $120,000. If you actually want to shift the recharge time to off peak, you need enough to charge X cars during the day, you are in the millions of $ per station, just for a time shift. And there are conversion losses - you need to be able to run that capacitor bank from 550V all the way down to zero V to get all that energy out, and it is hard to make a circuit that is efficient over such a wide range.
Either way, the caps need to be charged, and losses accounted for. Not really any big win. If anything, they might use old EV batteries to level load the grid draw over a few hours.
Yes, but Netherlands is not the US.
True, charging stations won't see the kind of use gas stations do, since people will charge at home mostly. But the point was that if something like half the cars were EV, the ratio of charge stations to gas stations would have to get a bit closer, and that is still a lot of charge stations, that draw a lot of power.
-ERD50
