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> We should be doing a fuckton of R+D into energy storage solutions I agree that we should research energy storage, but there's no guarantee such research woul
by gnode 7y ago
> We should be doing a fuckton of R+D into energy storage solutions
I agree that we should research energy storage, but there's no guarantee such research would be very fruitful. I don't think it's sensible to double down on the CCGT stopgap, and put our faith in technological breakthroughs. Nuclear fission is a technology which exists now, and we should invest in before the window closes.
That said, I can't see it happening in the UK because our politics are a dumpster fire.
- ncmncm 7y agoStorage is just an engineering problem. It doesn't need breakthroughs, just development. And every system invented can be used at the same time, somewhere. The most cost-effective ones will spread. Underground air pressurization is low tech, and can drive existing gas turbines, with or without added methane. Catalytic production of ammonia from water and air is advancing by leaps and bounds, mostly enabling increasingly smaller synthesis systems. Ammonia is directly useful as industrial feedstock, liquid fuel, and fertilizer, once power storage reserve is met. Again, compatible with gas turbines. (A practical use for the waste oxygen would be helpful.) Ammonia is excellent because it is directly useful at the sites of wind turbines at remote farms, avoiding need for connection to an electric grid. It can be injected directly into the soil for fertilizer, and used to power existing machinery -- trucks, tractors. Intermittent production, there, is no handicap. Excess can be sold to neighbors.