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What challenges do you foresee in responding over days/weeks/months?
by etimberg 6y ago
What challenges do you foresee in responding over days/weeks/months?
- p1mrx 6y agoThe challenge is just having enough raw capacity to meet demand using intermittent renewable sources. Weather varies on the scale of days/weeks, and winter is cold because of limited sunlight. What energy source will we use to stay warm all winter?
- pfdietz 6y agoMake hydrogen, store it underground, and have enough combustion turbines available to back up the grid. A simple cycle combustion turbine power plant is about 5% of the cost of a nuclear power plant, per unit of power output.
- p1mrx 6y agoThat seems physically plausible, though it would be a lot easier if we could make methane efficiently, because we already have the infrastructure to transport and burn it.
- pfdietz 6y agoThe problem then is where do you get the carbon to make the methane. Ammonia might be a possibility, if it can be kept from escaping (toxic) or dissolving in underground water. Yet another possibility is underground storage of high temperature heat, artificial geothermal, if you will. But it would have to be extractable with cheap equipment. Perhaps it could be used to superheat hydrogen for injection into those combustion turbines.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoMaking hydrogen via electrolysis is very lossy though.. it's only worth it if you have nothing else to burn the power on.
- pfdietz 6y agoOr if you need a chemical energy store with very low $/kWh of storage capacity, for long term or rarely used storage. There, the efficiency penalty is much less important than it would be for rapidly cycling diurnal storage.