3 ms·

Its hard to imagine a more efficient solar energy storage medium than oil and gas. I'd be curious how close it is myself.

jessaustin 9y ago
I'm not sure how efficient hydrocarbons are as storage media; the point is that eras of geological processes have already done the work of storing energy in that form.
epistasis 9y ago
I was more interested in the claim of having more solar negating the need for storage. Oil and gas are horrifyingly inefficient storage mechanisms. Round trip will be less than 50%, best case. That said, power to gas may be worthwhile if there's a ton of excess electrical power certain times of the year and the capital costs of power to gas is low enough.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  I'm thinking more in terms of availability, cost, volume and portability. I might be wrong but wouldn't a oil tanker full of diesel fuel contain a great deal more potential energy than the same volume of the best battery cell we can produce for this purpose?
  - cinquemb 9y ago
    See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14668163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14668163 Long term wise, there is more energy that we can collect store and extract from CSP technologies compared to oil (and lng/coal/etc on the grid/plant level), without all the exposure to market risks being exposed to oil (ie. volatility [0]). http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart[0] http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-char...
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    Storage doesn't much care about volume and portability; batteries are good enough. Availability is important for pumped storage, but after that everything scores pretty similarly. So you're left with cost dominating the equation, along with the lesser factor of round-trip efficiency. And it costs a lot of money to store excess energy as hydrocarbons.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Easy. If you have a ton of panels you have a ton of excess electricity during peak production hours and whatever you skim off the top is basically free. You're better off inefficiently converting what you skim off the top into something you can convert back into energy efficiently or cheaply/easily (pumping water up a hill, running grow lamps on algae that turn into bio-fuel or some other Rube Goldberg operation) than using an expensive, efficient storage mechanism. Basically, putting excess capacity to use is basically free so you don't care about the round trip efficiency (in dollars, joules in/out, or whatever metric you're using) of your storage medium, just the return portion of the trip.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Heavy metals are a pretty damn good storage medium. The bang for your buck you get when nuclei fall apart is unbeatable.

jessaustin 9y ago

I'm not sure how efficient hydrocarbons are as storage media; the point is that eras of geological processes have already done the work of storing energy in that form.

epistasis 9y ago

I was more interested in the claim of having more solar negating the need for storage. Oil and gas are horrifyingly inefficient storage mechanisms. Round trip will be less than 50%, best case. That said, power to gas may be worthwhile if there's a ton of excess electrical power certain times of the year and the capital costs of power to gas is low enough.

KekDemaga 9y ago
I'm thinking more in terms of availability, cost, volume and portability. I might be wrong but wouldn't a oil tanker full of diesel fuel contain a great deal more potential energy than the same volume of the best battery cell we can produce for this purpose?
- cinquemb 9y ago
  See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14668163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14668163 Long term wise, there is more energy that we can collect store and extract from CSP technologies compared to oil (and lng/coal/etc on the grid/plant level), without all the exposure to market risks being exposed to oil (ie. volatility [0]). http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart[0] http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-char...
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  Storage doesn't much care about volume and portability; batteries are good enough. Availability is important for pumped storage, but after that everything scores pretty similarly. So you're left with cost dominating the equation, along with the lesser factor of round-trip efficiency. And it costs a lot of money to store excess energy as hydrocarbons.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Easy. If you have a ton of panels you have a ton of excess electricity during peak production hours and whatever you skim off the top is basically free. You're better off inefficiently converting what you skim off the top into something you can convert back into energy efficiently or cheaply/easily (pumping water up a hill, running grow lamps on algae that turn into bio-fuel or some other Rube Goldberg operation) than using an expensive, efficient storage mechanism. Basically, putting excess capacity to use is basically free so you don't care about the round trip efficiency (in dollars, joules in/out, or whatever metric you're using) of your storage medium, just the return portion of the trip.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

Heavy metals are a pretty damn good storage medium. The bang for your buck you get when nuclei fall apart is unbeatable.