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This feels like hydrogen fuel cell tech — “something better on the horizon” that will keep you from investing in the obvious: free energy from the fusion reacto
by NoblePublius 8y ago
This feels like hydrogen fuel cell tech — “something better on the horizon” that will keep you from investing in the obvious: free energy from the fusion reactor that already works in the sky. I would put every dollar of public fusion research money into solar and battery storage. That works now. The only thing fusion research accomplishes, like HFC, is prolong dependence on carbon energy.
- starbeast 8y agoFunny comparison. If you like batteries, fuel cell tech would be one of the places you would want to be putting some of your primary research money.
- NoblePublius 8y agoThere is no naturally occurring source of hydrogen. That’s why you see ads for HFC from Shell and Chevron. Hydrogen must be made from oil or gas. Salt water electrolysis doesn’t really work at scale as it requires even more oil and gas. Even if you do SWE with renewable energy, it’s about 22x less efficient than putting the electricity in a battery. We have fusion. It’s in the sky. We don’t need it on earth.
- starbeast 8y agoI'm talking about fully reversible fuel cells for grid storage, not a hydrogen fuels economy. So this kind of thing - https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/rev_fc_wkshp_anderson.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/rev_fc_w...
- bigblind 8y agoI know extremely little about the subject, but aren't we decennia away from battery storage at the necessary scale as well?
- NoblePublius 8y agoGigafactory 1 is two years from full production. Gigafactory 2 is five years from full production. Fusion is infinity years from full production
- lrem 8y agoWhy battery though? Isn't potential energy environmentally friendlier when on a large scale?
- NoblePublius 8y agoGravity storage has its uses but won’t work in urban areas. We are gonna buy cars for a long time, and we might as well also use those cars as a distributed power plant when they aren’t being driven. Tesla isn’t a car company. It’s a power company.