5 ms·
If you wait for power prices to be negative (or merely lower than usual) you are not getting an economic return on the money you put into the desalination plant
by thinkcontext 8y ago
If you wait for power prices to be negative (or merely lower than usual) you are not getting an economic return on the money you put into the desalination plant when it is not running. Think about it, if you get a 100M Euros loan to make a desalination plant, how long will it take to pay that off if you only run your plant a few hours per day vs 24 hours per day. Whether it makes economic sense depends on the difference in power prices, the capacity factor, and the ratio to capital cost.
Germany has been attempting to make it work by turning the surplus electricity into hydrogen gas (and then maybe to something else, methane, diesel, ammonia, etc) by splitting water.
- azeotropic 8y agoMore like 1 hour every 4 days in Germany, if I'm counting the number of hours YTD correctly.
- thinkcontext 8y agoWell, I did also say low not just negative.
- rapnie 8y agoYes, hydrolysis could be a good solution. Create hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could also be used in hydrogen cars that we have been talking about for decades.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dwd 8y agohttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-08/hydrogen-fuel-breakthrough-csiro-game-changer-export-potential/10082514?pfmredir=sm http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-08/hydrogen-fuel-breakthr... Ammonia would be preferrable as it is carbon-free and readily liquified.
- rapnie 8y agoWas about to mention that too. There is a HN thread about that currently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17711717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17711717
- thinkcontext 8y agoThere's plenty of demand for hydrogen as hydrogen. And one of the things the Germans are doing is mixing hydrogen into the natural gas supply. That's pretty cheap to do compared to having to spend energy on chemical alchemy to turn the hydrogen into something else. Another option is to turn it into natural gas, plenty of existing infrastructure for handling that as well. So, ammonia is interesting but by no means a slam dunk. And whether it makes sense to ship it internationally is an open question given the differing economics of green hydrogen vs sticking a hole in the ground and having fossil fuels come out. Here's what I said in the other thread: "The comparative advantage nations have over each other in energy in a post-fossil fuel world will be much reduced. That is, Saudi Arabia has a huge advantage over Japan in terms of cheap fossil fuel energy, so Japan imports a lot from them. Though Saudi Arabia likely has an advantage over Japan in renewable resources, its not as dramatic as their fossil fuel advantage, so Japan would invest in their own energy resources and import less of them. Because of this there will likely be much less international energy traded in general."