# Arkyvolt

https://arkyvolt.com/

## arkyvolt

/ˈɑːkɪvəʊlt/ *noun*

1. The source of power.
2. A holding company.

From Greek ἀρχή, *arkhē*: beginning, origin, first principle; and *volt*, the unit of electric potential, after Alessandro Volta, 1745–1827.

Gideon is a founder (of Chargetrip, https://chargetrip.com) and investor. Arkyvolt is his holding company. Contact: gideon@arkyvolt.com. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gideonvd/

The site is set as a dictionary. It has three sections: *entries* (essays, each opening as a dictionary entry), *Sayisms* (typographic posters) and *coin it* (put a friend in the dictionary).

---

# Entries

Newest first.

## range

/reɪn(d)ʒ/ *noun*

1. The distance an electric car can travel on one charge.
2. The confidence a driver has that it is enough.

9 October 2026 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/range/

Range is usually printed as a number. It is measured on a test cycle, rounded, and put in a brochure. The driver never meets that number. They meet a road, a temperature, a load, a headwind, and a charger that may or may not be working when they arrive.

So the first sense of range belongs to the car, and the second belongs to the journey. The first can be engineered. The second has to be earned, on every trip, with information the driver can trust.

## Confidence is a forecast

*Note: A forecast is only useful if it is honest about what it does not know.*

A route that ends with twelve per cent left is a promise. A route that ends with twelve per cent, give or take five, is a forecast. Drivers forgive a forecast that was wrong in the way it said it might be. They do not forgive a promise.[^1]

*[Figure: A line falling from 80 per cent charge at departure to 12 per cent at arrival, inside a band of uncertainty that widens along the way.. The forecast, with its uncertainty drawn in.]*

The band matters more than the line. It tells the driver where the margin is, and it tells the planner where to put the stop.

## The number on the dashboard

Every car shows a range estimate, and every driver learns to distrust it within a week. It is not wrong so much as alone: it knows the battery and nothing about the road ahead. Put it next to the route and it becomes useful again.

> The car knows how full it is. Only the journey knows how far that is.
> — A driver, Utrecht

The interesting work is not a better number. It is giving the number company: the [[grid]] it will charge from, the [[queue]] it may meet, the [[tariff]] it will pay.

[^1]: Fifteen interviews with drivers in the Netherlands and Germany, autumn 2026.

## specimen

/ˈspɛsɪmɪn/ *noun*

1. Every element an essay can contain, set in the same system as the entries: one size, the axis, four colours.
2. A long page for judging how they sit together.

9 October 2026 · Amsterdam · 8 minutes · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/specimen/

This is the opening paragraph of a long test entry. It has no argument to make; its job is to look like one. A real post begins the same way, with a paragraph of ordinary length that sets the measure, the rhythm of the lines and the colour of the page before anything unusual happens. Read it as texture: are the lines too long, is the leading comfortable, does the serif hold up at this size on your screen?

The second paragraph is longer on purpose, because most problems with a text column only appear once a paragraph runs past seven or eight lines and the eye has to find its way back to the left edge several times in a row. Somewhere in a paragraph like this there will be a word that wants to break badly, a line that ends on a short word, and a last line with only one or two words on it. The browser is asked to balance these where it can. There are also the small things that every essay contains without noticing: a date such as 9 October 2026, a figure such as 1,250 km, a range such as 15–20 per cent, a time such as 14:30, an abbreviation such as kWh or the EU, a pair of “quotation marks”, an apostrophe in a word like driver’s, and a dash — set off with spaces — in the middle of a sentence.

A short paragraph follows a long one. It should not look lost.

## Emphasis and small things in the line

*Note: The line itself*

Words can be *emphasised in italic*, which is the normal way to stress something or to name a book such as *The Elements of Typographic Style*. They can also be **set in bold**, which should be rare in running text, and very occasionally ***both at once***. A correction can be ~~struck through~~ and replaced. A term from code, such as `chargeOnArrival` or `route.plan()`, is set in a fixed-width face inside the line without changing its height.

Long things must not break the column: a web address written out in full, https://www.example.com/a/very/long/path/that/goes/on/and/on/without/any/natural/place/to/break, has to wrap, and so does an unreasonably long word like electroencephalographically or Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft when it lands at the end of a line.

## Links

*Note: Out, and in*

A link that leaves the site carries a faint line beneath it, and pointed at, a full line is drawn in from the left, as with the [ISO 15118 standard](https://www.iso.org/standard/77845.html) for how cars and chargers talk, or a longer piece of linked text such as [the European regulation on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1804/oj) that may run over a line break. A link to another entry is set the way dictionaries cross-refer, as a headword: see [[range]], and [[demand]]. Several can follow each other closely: [[grid]], [[tariff]], [[demand]]. Pointed at, they have the same line drawn in as every link on the site: one behaviour, everywhere.

## Notes

*Note: This is a margin note. It sits beside the paragraph it belongs to and can run to several lines when it has to.*

A margin note is written on its own line above the paragraph. It is for an aside that the reader may skip: a definition, a caveat, a one-line summary of the paragraph. This paragraph has one. Notes are set in the sans, smaller in weight and quieter in colour than the text, and hang right against the axis like everything else in the margin.

A footnote is different: it is tied to a place in the sentence.[^first] The number sits in the line and the note itself appears in the margin beside the paragraph, so nobody has to jump to the foot of the page and back. A paragraph can carry more than one,[^second] and each keeps its own number.

[^first]: This is the first footnote. It appears in the margin next to the paragraph that cites it.
[^second]: This is the second. Notes can contain a [link](https://www.example.com) and *emphasis*.

## Quotations

A short quotation can simply stay in the line, “like this one,” inside its paragraph. A longer one is set apart.

> A forecast is useful when it is honest about what it does not know. Drivers forgive a forecast that was wrong in the way it said it might be. They do not forgive a promise.
>
> — From the entry on range

A quotation can also run to more than one paragraph, and may have no source at all:

> The first paragraph of a longer quotation sets out the thought at an ordinary pace, long enough to wrap over a few lines so that the edge it makes can be judged.
>
> The second paragraph continues it. Between the two there should be a clear pause, but they must still read as one voice and not as two separate quotations.

## Lists

*Note: Unordered*

A forecast needs three things:

- a route,
- the weather along it,
- and a charger at the end that is working.

*Note: Ordered*

1. Plan the route.
2. Forecast the charge on arrival, with its margin.
3. Choose the stop that removes the most doubt from what follows.

*Note: Longer items, and items inside items*

- A list item can be a full sentence that runs past the end of the line, in which case the second line has to start under the first word and not under the marker.
- An item can have items of its own:
  - a first sub-item,
  - a second sub-item that is long enough to wrap, so that the indent of its second line can be checked as well,
  - and a third.
- And the list can carry on afterwards.

1. Numbered lists can be long enough to reach two digits.
2. Two.
3. Three.
4. Four.
5. Five.
6. Six.
7. Seven.
8. Eight.
9. Nine.
10. Ten, where the wider number must still hang cleanly in the gutter.
11. Eleven.

## Headings inside a section

A section, with its number in the margin, can be divided once more.

### A smaller heading

The smaller heading has no number. It sits closer to the text that follows it than to the text before it, so that it reads as a label for what comes next.

### Another smaller heading

Two of them in a row, each with a short paragraph, show whether the spacing above and below is right when they come thick and fast.

## Figures

A photograph spans the whole grid, margin and text column together. Its number and caption sit beneath it, in the grid.

*[Photograph: An electric car plugged into a charging station, its cable arcing across the frame.. A photograph with a caption of ordinary length. Photograph by Michael Förtsch, Unsplash.]*

A drawing keeps to the text column. Its caption hangs in the margin, level with its top, and its lines take the colours of the page, so it turns with the theme.

*[Figure: Charge on arrival as a forecast. A drawing: charge on arrival as a forecast. The band widens with distance.]*

Text carries on directly after a figure, and a second photograph can follow soon after the first.

*[Photograph: A charging post at the edge of a car park, its cable coiled around it.. A second photograph, with a longer caption that runs to more than one line so that the way it wraps under the picture can be checked. Photograph by Roger Starnes Sr, Unsplash.]*

## Film

A film is a still on the full grid until it is played. There is one control, set in the type, and nothing moves or makes a sound until it is asked to.

*[Film: Still from the film: an electric car at a charging station.. A still holds the frame until it is played. With no film yet, there is no button.]*

## Tables

*Note: A small table: common connectors and their typical maximum power.*

| Connector | Current | Region        | Up to, kW |
|-----------|---------|---------------|----------:|
| Type 2    | AC      | Europe        |        22 |
| CCS2      | DC      | Europe        |       350 |
| NACS      | DC      | North America |       250 |
| CHAdeMO   | DC      | Japan         |        50 |

A table can also be wider than the column of text, with more columns than fit comfortably, and with longer text in some of its cells.

*Note: A wide table, with figures in several columns and a longer note in the last.*

| Stop | Distance, km | Arrive, % | Charge, min | Leave, % | Power, kW | Note |
|------|-------------:|----------:|------------:|---------:|----------:|------|
| Utrecht    |  42 | 71 |  0 | 71 |   0 | Passed without stopping. |
| Arnhem     | 104 | 48 | 12 | 80 | 150 | Short stop; the charger was free on arrival. |
| Oberhausen | 212 | 37 | 18 | 85 | 250 | The stop that removes the most doubt from the rest of the journey. |
| Köln       | 281 | 58 |  0 | 58 |   0 | Passed without stopping. |
| Frankfurt  | 463 | 12 | 25 | 80 | 300 | Arrival with the forecast margin almost used up. |

## Code

Code that needs more than a few words is set apart, in a fixed-width face, on its own lines. Long lines scroll sideways; they never wrap.

```python
def charge_on_arrival(battery_kwh, consumption_kwh_per_km, distance_km, margin=0.05):
    """Forecast the charge left at the end of a leg, with its margin."""
    used = consumption_kwh_per_km * distance_km
    left = max(0.0, battery_kwh - used) / battery_kwh
    return left, (left - margin, left + margin)   # a forecast, not a promise
```

*Note: No language given*

```
GET /route?from=Amsterdam&to=Frankfurt&car=id4
200 OK
```

## Mathematics

*Note: Inline*

Inline maths sits in the line at the size of the text. Range is energy over average consumption, $R = \frac{E}{\bar{e}}$, and it inherits the doubt in both. Simple symbols such as $x$, $\sigma$ and $n^2$ should not disturb the spacing of the lines around them.

$$\frac{\sigma_R}{R} = \sqrt{\left(\frac{\sigma_E}{E}\right)^2 + \left(\frac{\sigma_{\bar{e}}}{\bar{e}}\right)^2}$$

*Note: Display*

Equations stand flush left on the text edge, never centred. Their number hangs in the margin, where the section numbers are. A second one follows, to check that the numbering continues.

$$E_{\text{arrival}} = E_{\text{start}} - \int_0^{d} e(x)\,dx$$

## A break

Sometimes an essay changes subject without wanting a heading. A break marks the pause.

---

After the break the text simply continues, as this paragraph does. It is also the last section, so what follows it is the end of the entry: the way to the previous and the next one.

## grid

/ɡrɪd/ *noun*

1. The network that carries electricity from where it is made to where it is used.
2. A pattern of lines that holds things in place.

21 September 2026 · Rotterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/grid/

Both senses describe the same thing from different distances. Up close, the grid is copper, transformers and substations. From far away, it is a set of lines that decides what can go where.

## A shared limit

A street has a cable, and the cable has a rating. Every heat pump, every oven and every car on that street draws from the same rating. Nobody owns the margin; everybody spends it.

*Note: In the Netherlands, more than eight thousand businesses are waiting for a grid connection.*

That is why a waiting list for a connection is not a failure of planning but a description of physics. The planners can only move the limit by digging, and digging takes years.

## What can move instead

If the cable cannot grow quickly, the load has to learn to wait. A car parked for nine hours needs perhaps two of them to charge. The other seven are the margin nobody has spent yet.

- Charge later, when the street is quiet.
- Charge slower, when the street is busy.
- Charge somewhere else, when the street is full.

Each of these is a small inconvenience to a driver and a large relief to a cable. The art is in asking for the first without anyone noticing it. See [[demand]] and [[curtailment]].

## tariff

/ˈtarɪf/ *noun*

1. A list of the prices charged for a service.
2. A price that changes with the time it is paid.

30 August 2026 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/tariff/

The word came into English from Italian, and into Italian from Arabic *taʿrīf*, a notification. A tariff was a notice nailed up for traders: this is what it will cost.

## Prices that move

A fixed tariff is a promise from the seller. A dynamic tariff is a forecast shared with the buyer. The second is fairer, and much harder to read.

*Note: Table 1 shows a typical weekday in October.*

| Hour        | Price per kWh | Compared with average |
|:------------|--------------:|----------------------:|
| 00:00–06:00 |        €0.14  |                  −42% |
| 06:00–10:00 |        €0.27  |                  +12% |
| 10:00–16:00 |        €0.19  |                  −21% |
| 16:00–21:00 |        €0.36  |                  +50% |
| 21:00–24:00 |        €0.22  |                   −8% |

The cost of a charge is then a sum over the hours it takes:

$$
C = \sum_{h} p_h \, e_h
$$

where $p_h$ is the price in hour $h$ and $e_h$ the energy drawn in it. The driver sees only $C$. The software sees every term, and can move the large ones.

## Reading it for someone

Nobody wants to read a price list before plugging in. The useful thing is a sentence: *ready by seven, about four euros.* Everything in the table above is still there, folded into the choice of when.

## kilowatt

/ˈkɪləwɒt/ *noun*

1. A unit of power equal to one thousand watts.
2. The word most often confused with kilowatt-hour.

12 August 2026 · Berlin · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/kilowatt/

Power is a rate; energy is an amount. A kilowatt says how fast; a kilowatt-hour says how much. The difference is the difference between the width of a pipe and the water in a bath.

## The arithmetic

The relation is one line:

$$
E = P \times t
$$

A charger of $P = 11$ kW running for $t = 4$ hours delivers $E = 44$ kWh, if the car can take it all that time. It usually cannot: the battery slows the charge as it fills.

*Note: Real cars taper. The figures are rounded.*

| Charger         | Power   | 10–80% in a 60 kWh battery |
|:----------------|--------:|---------------------------:|
| Home socket     | 2.3 kW  |                   18 hours |
| Wall box        | 11 kW   |                    4 hours |
| Fast charger    | 50 kW   |                 55 minutes |
| Ultra-fast      | 150 kW  |                 25 minutes |

## Why it matters

When a driver asks *how long will it take*, the answer needs both units and the battery between them. Saying *150 kW* answers a question nobody asked. Saying *twenty-five minutes* answers the one they did.

## queue

/kjuː/ *noun*

1. A line of people or vehicles waiting their turn.
2. Time spent waiting that nobody planned for.

28 July 2026 · Utrecht · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/queue/

Every charging hub is a small queueing system. Cars arrive at random, stay for a while and leave. When they arrive faster than they leave, a line forms, and the line is what drivers remember.

*[Figure: Average wait at a charging hub, by part of the day: highest in the evening.. Average wait at one hub, by part of the day.]*

## The shape of a bad evening

The evening peak is short and steep. Commuters arrive within the same hour, each with a little less charge than they would like, each hoping to be quick.

> I don't mind waiting. I mind not knowing that I'll wait.
> — A taxi driver, Amsterdam

## What helps

1. Show the wait before the driver commits to the stop.
2. Offer the next hub, with its wait, in the same glance.
3. Hold a place for a car that is already on its way:
   - only for a few minutes,
   - only when the hub is close to full.

None of these makes the hub bigger. All of them make the queue shorter, because a queue is partly made of people who did not know about it. See [[range]].

## demand

/dɪˈmɑːnd/ *noun*

1. The amount of electricity wanted at a given moment.
2. Wanting that arrives all at once.

9 July 2026 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/demand/

Demand is not a total but a shape. Over a day, a city wants roughly the same energy whether its cars charge at noon or at midnight. What changes is when, and the grid is built for when.

*[Figure: Demand over one day, rising in the morning and peaking at half past six in the evening.. A weekday in a residential district. The band shows the same evening spread by smart charging.]*

## The evening

*Note: The peak is set by habit, not by need.*

People come home, cook, switch on the heat and plug in the car, all within the same ninety minutes. Each act is small. Together they set the size of every cable in the street.

## Spreading it

The band in the figure carries the same energy as the line. It is lower because the cars in it were told, politely, that the morning would do. Nobody in that street drove less. They just stopped asking for everything at once.

See [[grid]], [[curtailment]] and [[tariff]].

## curtailment

/kəːˈteɪlm(ə)nt/ *noun*

1. The deliberate reduction of output from a wind or solar plant.
2. Clean energy made and then thrown away.

17 June 2026 · Copenhagen · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/curtailment/

On a windy night with little demand, a wind farm can produce more than the grid can carry away. The operator is then paid, or told, to turn the turbines out of the wind. The energy that would have been made is simply not made.

## How much

*Note: Table 1. Curtailed renewable energy, selected countries, most recent full year. Figures rounded.*

| Country     | Wind and solar curtailed | Share of their output | Main cause                    | Paid to curtail | Trend        |
|:------------|-------------------------:|----------------------:|:------------------------------|:----------------|:-------------|
| Germany     |                 10 TWh   |                  3.5% | North–south transmission      | Yes             | Rising       |
| UK          |                  4 TWh   |                  4.9% | Scotland to England links     | Yes             | Rising       |
| Netherlands |                  1 TWh   |                  1.8% | Local congestion              | Partly          | Rising       |
| Denmark     |                0.5 TWh   |                  1.2% | Interconnector limits         | Yes             | Flat         |
| Spain       |                  2 TWh   |                  1.9% | Midday solar surplus          | No              | Rising fast  |

## A battery on wheels

A parked car is a small, patient load. If it could charge exactly when a turbine would otherwise be turned down, the cheapest kilowatt-hour on the grid would go into a battery that wanted it anyway.

That needs three things to meet: a signal from the grid, a car that is plugged in, and a driver who has said, once, *I need it by seven.* The rest is scheduling. See [[demand]].

## anchor

/ˈaŋkə/ *noun*

1. A heavy object that holds a ship in place.
2. A holding that keeps the others steady.

2 June 2026 · Lisbon · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/anchor/

An anchor does not stop a ship from moving. It stops it from drifting. The ship still swings with the tide and the wind; it simply comes back to the same place.

## In a holding company

A holding company is made of things that move at different speeds. Some grow quickly and need attention every week. One or two grow slowly and need almost none. The slow ones are the anchors.

> Patience is a position, not a mood.

An anchor holding is one you would keep through a bad decade. It earns enough to pay for its own mistakes, and it teaches the faster holdings what lasting looks like.

## Choosing one

- It does something people will need in thirty years.
- It needs capital less than it needs time.
- Its people would run it the same way if nobody were watching.

The third is the hardest to check, and the only one that matters when the tide turns. See [[capital]].

## latency

/ˈleɪt(ə)nsi/ *noun*

1. The delay between a request and its answer.
2. The time in which a driver decides not to wait.

14 May 2026 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/latency/

A route that takes four seconds to plan is not four times worse than one that takes one second. It is a different product. At one second the driver watches it happen; at four they look away, and some of them do not look back.[^1]

## Where the time goes

A request to plan a route with charging stops does a surprising amount of work: it reads the car's state, the map, the chargers on the way and their likely availability, then searches through thousands of possible stops.

```js
// The budget for one route, in milliseconds. The search gets what is left.
const budget = { network: 120, car: 40, chargers: 180, search: 450, answer: 60 };
const total = Object.values(budget).reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0);   // 850
```

The search is the only part that can be made smarter. Everything else can only be made closer: cached, prefetched, or asked for before the driver has finished typing.[^2]

## The rule

Answer something within a tenth of a second, even if it is only the start of the answer. A line on the map that appears and then improves feels faster than a perfect line that arrives late.

[^1]: Measured in a route planner with about 40,000 daily users, 2025.
[^2]: The same idea as this site, which prepares the next page while the pointer rests on a link.

## forecast

/ˈfɔːkɑːst/ *noun*

1. A statement about what will probably happen.
2. A promise that admits it might be wrong.

22 April 2026 · London · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/forecast/

A weather forecast is the most widely read piece of statistics in the world, and most of its readers ignore the most important part of it: the probability.

## Saying how sure

A forecast of arrival charge has the same form. It is a central estimate and a spread:

$$
\hat{s} = s_0 - \frac{1}{B} \int_0^{d} c(x) \, dx \pm \sigma
$$

where $s_0$ is the charge at departure, $B$ the battery's capacity, $c(x)$ the energy used per kilometre along the way and $\sigma$ the uncertainty, which grows with distance.

*Note: The spread is what makes the forecast honest.*

Most of the craft is in $c(x)$: slopes, speed, temperature, wind. Most of the trust is in $\sigma$. A forecast that says *12 %, give or take 5* and lands at 9 has kept its word.[^1]

## Being wrong well

Every forecast will be wrong. The question is whether it was wrong in the way it said it might be, often enough that the driver stops checking. See [[range]].

[^1]: The same test is used for weather forecasts and is called calibration: of all the days given a 30 % chance of rain, it should rain on about 30 %.

## capital

/ˈkapɪt(ə)l/ *noun*

1. Money used to start or grow a business.
2. The capacity to wait for a return.

30 March 2026 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/capital/

The word shares a root with *cattle*: the head count of a herd, the wealth that walks and breeds. Capital was always something that grows if you leave it alone long enough.

## Two kinds of money

*Note: The second kind is rarer than the first.*

There is money that needs to be back in five years and money that can wait twenty. Both are called capital. They build very different companies.

| Horizon    | What it rewards        | What it punishes  |
|:-----------|:-----------------------|:------------------|
| 5 years    | Speed, a clear exit    | Slow compounding  |
| 10 years   | A durable position     | Distraction       |
| 20 years   | Character, compounding | Impatience        |

## Infrastructure

Energy infrastructure sits at the far end of that table. A charger lasts ten years, a substation forty, a cable longer. Companies that build them need owners who think in the same units. See [[anchor]].

## corridor

/ˈkɒrɪdɔː/ *noun*

1. A long passage connecting places.
2. A route along which charging is reliable enough to forget.

11 March 2026 · Hamburg · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/corridor/

A corridor is defined less by its length than by its gaps. A motorway with a fast charger every sixty kilometres is a corridor. The same motorway with one gap of two hundred is a gamble.

## What makes one

1. Chargers close enough together that one broken site is not a crisis:
   1. no gap longer than a third of a typical car's range,
   2. at least two operators along the way.
2. Sites large enough that the evening peak does not form a [[queue]].
3. Information good enough that the driver never has to check.

The third is the cheapest to build and the one most often missing.

## Forgetting

A corridor succeeds when the driver stops planning for it. Nobody plans the petrol stations on a motorway; they know there will be one. Charging becomes ordinary on the day drivers know the same, without looking. See [[range]].

## patience

/ˈpeɪʃ(ə)ns/ *noun*

1. The ability to wait without becoming annoyed.
2. A strategy disguised as a temperament.

19 February 2026 · Utrecht · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/patience/

Patience is often described as a virtue, which makes it sound like something one is born with. In practice it is mostly arithmetic: knowing what waiting costs and what it earns.

> Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten.
> — An old saying, attributed to many

A driver who waits ten minutes for a free charger is patient if they knew it would be ten. Tell them nothing, and the same ten minutes become intolerable. Patience needs a number.

---

The same holds for owning a company. Waiting for it to grow is easy when the reasons are written down and checked once a year. It is impossible when every month brings a new reason to doubt. See [[anchor]] and [[capital]].

## depot

/ˈdɛpəʊ/ *noun*

1. A place where vehicles are kept and maintained.
2. Where a fleet sleeps and wakes up charged.

27 January 2026 · Rotterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/depot/

A depot is a [[grid]] problem with a timetable. Forty vans come back between five and seven in the evening and must leave, full enough, between six and eight in the morning. The connection to the street was sized for a warehouse, not a fleet.

## The night

*Note: A van that drives 120 km a day needs about 30 kWh back.*

Forty vans at 30 kWh each is 1,200 kWh over a night of eleven hours: just over 109 kW on average. The connection allows 150 kW. On paper it fits. In the evening, with every van plugged in at once and asking for 11 kW, it is three times over.

## Taking turns

The answer is a schedule:

- the vans leaving first charge first;
- the vans that drove furthest get more;
- nobody gets less than they need by morning.

**The depot never exceeds its connection, and no driver ever notices.** That sentence is the whole specification. Everything else is detail. See [[demand]].

## ledger

/ˈlɛdʒə/ *noun*

1. A book in which accounts are recorded.
2. A record that cannot be argued with afterwards.

8 January 2026 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/ledger/

Every charging session ends with a ledger entry: who charged, where, how much, at what price. Between a car, a charger, an operator and a card provider, that single line passes through four systems, each with its own idea of what happened.

## One session, four records

*Note: Table 1. The same session, as four parties recorded it.*

| Party       | Energy    | Duration | Price  |
|:------------|----------:|---------:|-------:|
| Car         | 31.8 kWh  |   47 min |      – |
| Charger     | 32.4 kWh  |   49 min |      – |
| Operator    | 32.4 kWh  |   49 min | €17.50 |
| Card issuer |         – |        – | €17.50 |

The car measures what went into the battery; the charger measures what left the cable. The difference is heat, and it is real.

## Settling

```python
# A session is settled when the parties that measure energy agree within tolerance.
def settled(car_kwh: float, charger_kwh: float, tolerance: float = 0.03) -> bool:
    return abs(charger_kwh - car_kwh) / charger_kwh <= tolerance
```

Three per cent covers losses in charging. Anything more is worth a question, and a ledger is where questions are asked. See [[tariff]].

## volt

/vəʊlt/ *noun*

1. The unit of electric potential.
2. The second half of arkyvolt.

15 December 2025 · Como · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/volt/

The volt is named after Alessandro Volta, who in 1800 stacked discs of zinc and copper with brine-soaked cloth between them and made the first battery. He called it a *pila*, a pile, which is still the Italian word for battery.

*Note: ἀρχή, *arkhē*: the beginning, the first principle.*

Arkyvolt joins his unit to the Greek *arkhē*: the source, the beginning, the first principle. The source of power. The name was chosen before the companies were, which is the right order for a name.

---

A volt measures pressure, not quantity: how hard the charge is pushed, not how much of it there is. It is a good unit for a holding company to be named after. See [[kilowatt]] and [[anchor]].

## threshold

/ˈθrɛʃhəʊld/ *noun*

1. The strip of wood or stone at the bottom of a doorway.
2. The level at which something starts to happen.

26 November 2025 · Berlin · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/threshold/

Drivers have a threshold of charge below which they stop enjoying the drive. For most it is around twenty per cent; for some it is forty. Below it, every kilometre is spent watching a number.

## Measuring it

*Note: The threshold is personal, and it moves with experience.*

If $s$ is the charge and $\theta$ the threshold, comfort behaves roughly like a step:

$$
\text{comfort}(s) = \frac{1}{1 + e^{-k(s - \theta)}}
$$

with $k$ large for a new driver, whose comfort falls off a cliff, and small for an experienced one, who has learned that the last ten per cent is real.

## Designing for it

A route planner that knows the threshold can plan stops that keep the charge above it. It costs a few minutes more. It gives back a calmer drive, which is the thing the driver was buying. See [[range]] and [[forecast]].

## interface

/ˈɪntəfeɪs/ *noun*

1. A point where two systems meet and act on each other.
2. Everything a person sees of a system, and nothing else.

30 October 2025 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/interface/

For the person using it, the interface is the system. Whatever happens behind it, the algorithms, the data and the people, exists for them only as far as the interface lets it through.

## Less, and the right less

> Good design is as little design as possible.
> — Dieter Rams

*Note: The rule cuts both ways: too little is also a design.*

An interface for charging should answer three questions without being asked: *where*, *how long*, *how much*. Any fourth answer has to earn its place against the first three.

## Typography

Most of an interface is text. Its quality is decided by the same few things as a book: a typeface made for reading, a measure that does not tire the eye, and an order that is clear before a word is read. This site is set in Fira Sans and Source Serif 4, on a single axis, for that reason. See [[specimen]].

## charge

/tʃɑːdʒ/ *noun, verb*

1. Electrical energy stored in a battery.
2. A price asked for a service.
3. To fill a battery with energy.

2 October 2025 · Amsterdam · 1 minute · https://arkyvolt.com/entries/charge/

Few words carry so many meanings in one transaction. A driver arrives with a low *charge*, pays a *charge*, and leaves having *charged*. Three senses, one stop, all in the same word.

The English word comes through French from the Latin *carricare*, to load a cart. The first charge was a load, carried. A battery is still exactly that: a load of energy, carried.

Which sense the driver cares about depends on the moment. Before the stop, it is the first. At the end of the month, it is the second. The third, the act itself, should be the one they never think about. See [[tariff]] and [[kilowatt]].

---

# Sayisms

https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/

Typographic posters by Arkyvolt: 50 × 70 cm, unframed. Munken Pure 300 g, uncoated; Giclée, archival pigment inks. Rolled in a tube, within five working days. Payment is not yet open.

- No. 01: “Done is a forecast, not a promise.”, €98, edition of 50. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/forecast/
- No. 02: “Read the margin.”, €98, edition of 50. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/margin/
- No. 03: “Less, but on the grid.”, €98, edition of 50. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/grid/
- No. 04: “Kerning is a form of care.”, €98. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/kerning/
- No. 05: “Slow is a speed too.”, €98, edition of 50. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/slow/
- No. 06: “Every word earns its line.”, €98. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/line/
- No. 07: “The source of power is patience.”, €98, edition of 30. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/source/
- No. 08: “Charge it. Then go.”, €98. https://arkyvolt.com/sayisms/charge/
- A coined entry (from coin it), printed as a poster: €98.

---

# Coin it

https://arkyvolt.com/coin/

Write a dictionary entry for someone (a name, a part of speech, a sense, the word used in a sentence, their emoji, who coined it). It becomes a link to arkyvolt.com, with the entry written into the link itself; the word, its part of speech and sense are kept with its number in the dictionary, and appear among other entries once approved. Whoever opens it arrives at the dictionary and finds themselves there, in its alphabetical place. It can also be printed as a poster.

---

# Colophon

A note at the end of a book on how it was made.

- Sans: Fira Sans; Erik Spiekermann, Ralph du Carrois
- Serif: Source Serif 4; Frank Grießhammer
- Text: Fira Sans Light, 16–22 px, leading 145%
- Headwords: Fira Sans SemiBold
- Definitions: Source Serif 4 at 106.2%, to the x-height of the sans
- Figures: Lining and tabular in the sans, oldstyle in the serif
- Measure: 25 em, about 60 characters
- Colours: Yellow #F5BA14; Blue #244DC3; Dark #0E121A; Light #FCFAF5
- About: Gideon is a founder and investor, now in Amsterdam. Arkyvolt is his holding company.
- Contact: gideon@arkyvolt.com
- Room: Open, with a pass
- Imprint: Arkyvolt B.V., KvK 60270381; Keizersgracht 520, 1017 EK Amsterdam; Privacy, no tracking · version 195, 30 October 2026