4 ms·

I don't see anywhere in the article what they estimate or have tested the full system efficiency to be.

• Retric 9y ago
  Energy efficiency is not actually that important for this. Currently there are peaking power-plants that are only in use a couple of dozen hours per year which are still extremely important. Granted, even if Methane was 100% efficiently produced your still down to 60% from burning it. However, the main advantage of Gas turbines is they are cheap when not in use. Paying even 1$/kWh 1% of the time to provide an extra 10% power in those rare cases is really not a big deal. (1$ * 0.01 * .1 adds 1/10th of a cent per kWh to average electricity prices.) Sure, for basic day night cycle adjustments your going to want hydro or battery storage etc, but you start needing a lot of storage that's very rarely used if you want 99.99+% up-time. PS: This of course assumes a significant oversupply on average.