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by hagbard_c 747 days ago
The solution seems obvious in the use of wind turbines: when the wind blows there is power, the lines are cooled and the cars charged. No wind, no power, no need for cooling.

Am I missing something? A <sarcasm> tag maybe?

On a more serious note on how to get people to change their electricity use there is a real solution in flexible (hourly) pricing. This is what we have where I live - Sweden - and it can be a way to lower electricity bills quite a bit [1] by moving power hogs like water heaters, tumble driers and car chargers to the lowest-priced times of day. If you have solar panels and a contract which enables you to sell excess power at market rates (like we do) you can decide to feed their output into the net when prices are at their peak - usually around noon and somewhere between 17.00 and 21.00 (when it is still quite light in much of Sweden given that we straddle the polar circle) - while using most of it for power hogs off-peak.

[1] on the assumption that flexible pricing is controlled by supply and demand, not by some policy-enforcing surcharge. Electricity prices need to be able to go lower as well as higher than 'normal', not just normal or higher.