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It wouldn’t help because at best this is carbon neutral. But in reality it’s unlikely to be anywhere close to carbon neutral, in which case a tax on carbon make
by ebbv 9y ago
It wouldn’t help because at best this is carbon neutral. But in reality it’s unlikely to be anywhere close to carbon neutral, in which case a tax on carbon makes this much more costly than battery storage.
- usrusr 9y agoAnd if it was carbon-neutral, it would also be energy neutral, at best (realistically: much worse). But there is a time-shift opportunity in there, capture the CO2 when renewable output is lower than demand, recycle the CO2 into fuel when renewable energy is abundant. Retrofitting existing gas peaker plants into giant flow batteries would be the holy grail of grid scale energy storage.
- ebbv 9y agoExcept we know that existing fossil fuel burning plants are about 30% efficient. No battery is that bad. This is a really weak idea that only sounds good if you don’t think about the details at all. (And remember that 30% is only on the recovery side, you’d have to factor in any inefficiencies on the storage side before getting a final efficiency number to compare against other means such as batteries.)
- usrusr 9y ago> Except we know that existing fossil fuel burning plants are about 30% efficient High efficiency gas plants are reaching 60%, and it gets better when you have consumers for waste heat who would otherwise be burning fossils just for heating. Maybe you are be confusing the numbers with well-to-wheels efficiency of electric cars?