some examples of smaller spaces in other countries
I think just from the visualization of these parking spaces you can see why it is easier to back into them then to forward park.
robotaxis seem like a great place to dump yesterdayās trash
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Iām assuming it it is less expensive to hire a company like mine to run a program taking advantage of existing DERS than it is to purchase and manage big battery farms, although I imagine there is room for all sorts of solutions to the problem.
Iām on the operational side though so I donāt hear about efficiency of the solutionsā¦
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For sure. Iām sure it will be some combination.
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Iām pretty sure itās exactly the opposite. How in the world are you hitting adjacent cars while backing out of a parking space? Just keep the wheel straight and go back. But to back into that same spot you have to make sure that youāre lined up exactly between the car, that youāre not coming in at any type of angle, etc., etc. All of this assumes no tech assistance, which I concede has made backing in easier.
Another cool ābattery projectā I am working on is basically a two level lake. Pump water to the upper one when electricity is cheap and then release it to run a turbine when electricity is expensive or in high demand.
They are also starting to develop ābatteriesā that do the same idea but with compressed gas stored in underground salt caverns. Pretty cool stuff.
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The question is what if you had X money to spend on batteries, where does it do the most good
Scale efficiencies would suggest big batteries for grid scale impact.
But thereās also a bunch of local stuff where having more small batteries in the local neighbourhood grid can be beneficial.
The most obvious being, a bunch of batteries in a neighbourhood might reduce evening peak load and prevent the need to spend on expensive new transformers.
Beyond that the smarter they get the more useful they are, which can help get more rooftop solar into a grid while maintaining voltage in the local network.
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For sure. I know almost nothing about the distribution side (last mile stuff). Iāve only worked on the transmission side.
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Pumped storage batteries are pretty interesting, I think Denver has a pretty good sized one somewhere. My understanding is they arenāt super efficient and require a pretty high spread between cheap rates, when you pump the water uphill, and expensive rates when you let the water run back downhill.
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@dlk9s Have you considered writing stickers?
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/25/nx-s1-5369456/anti-elon-musk-bumper-sticker-tesla
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Know whatās funny? I actually saw some social media post a few days ago about a āside hustleā selling stickers on Etsy and have actually considered looking into it, at least out of intellectual curiosity, if nothing else.
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They are also expensive, and suffer from the ābuilding big thingsā mega project risk. (Over budget, over schedule, under value, over and over again)
But. There was previously a view that they were the only way to build storage at the scale required.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) it looks like grid scale batteries have won the cost tech battle. You can build them faster, cheaper, easier, and you can build enough of them. Lithium batteries are coming down in cost fast enough, and thereās at least two better battery techs on the horizon.
Which is the other issue with mega projects.
Australia started to build itās ultra massive Snowy Hydro 2 pumped hydro mega project in 2017. It may be finished in 2028. In that time batteries have come and eaten itās lunch.
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This beer hall putsch has become a hotbed of anti-Jewish sentiment, I have no idea what happened! I also donāt know if Herr Goebbels is aware of just how bad it is.
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I only know about him because physics and the Thiel association. Heās kind of a jackass.
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There are a bunch of pumped storage hydropower plants. Thereās one right outside Los angeles. Thereās a big one in virginia. Thereās a complex of them in the San Joaquin valley. Theyāve been around for a long time and have been used to store the energy that conventional power plants generate at night.
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I think thereās a demonstration project somewhere in the desert in Nevada or something where they have trains that go up a hill to store energy.
how weird is it that the very same people in power with very pro israel takes are also the same people with very anti semitic core beliefs