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Hydrogen is in an economic race with batteries in storage. Hydrogen is hard to store in tanks and has a higher thermodynamic loss and the fuel cells are expensi

Hydrogen is in an economic race with batteries in storage. Hydrogen is hard to store in tanks and has a higher thermodynamic loss and the fuel cells are expensive. Batteries are big and expensive. So the efficiency of hydrogen split-store-generate needs to beat the efficiency of store-release of the battery and the costs of the equipment.

londons_explore 5y ago
So far, batteries are pretty competitive on the "store energy for 24 hours" time horizon - where you need to power something at night with solar collected in the day, or evening out peaks and troughs in the electricity grid. But it isn't yet competitive with "store energy collected in the summer for use in the winter". For that usecase, far more energy must be stored for far fewer dollars to make it competitive vs just having a big fuel tank and a winter-only diesel generator. Keeping lakes of water for a few months for hydropower are also competitive - the storage capacity of a big lake on a mountain top is immense.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  If CATL and other LiFePO battery makers get them to 200wh/kg, which they teased in 2020, and they maintain the same cycle endurance, temperature range, safety, and cost advantages, it will be a real game changer. I've heard pumped water is like 90% efficient, but you need a gradient and space. Does wind power decrease in winter? I also remember schemes for making a huge solar farm in the Sahara and a superconducting conduit to Europe, and that was several paradigm shifts in solar cell performance ago (15 years). But almost all large countries seem to have a sufficiently sized desert to do this with (US, Russia, China). If solar gets good enough, and it is still on some prime parts of the economies of scale price drops, you don't care as much about long-distance transmission loss.
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
But we're already going to be building those batteries anyway: Electric cars. What we need is a proper international standard for cars to be able to interact with the grid, to be able to charge and discharge based on grid conditions and pricing. Its stupid to have everyone coming home from work at 6pm and plugging in their cars to charge right at the existing afternoon demand peak, when solar is waning. Just getting those cars to delay charging until around midnight (allowing user override) would shift a huge amount of peak demand. Same concept if you don't use your car during the day - it should be able to discharge right into the morning and afternoon peaks, at your control. The user should be credited for this onto their car account. It might even make sense to have dedicated high-voltage circuitry in houses and apartment blocks, to be used for EVs, solar, etc. And we should really figure that out immediately since EV production is ramping up right now. We can't just rely on single automakers (Tesla) to work out these societal problems.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  If we're going to try and ramp up battery production and technology, then in for a penny in for a pound. We should really decentralize the power grid enough to take the weight of these types of spikes, putting in batteries to the home (like the Tesla wall, but with more competition) and solar/wind/gravity generation to supplement grid power generation. It's a jobs program that's been needed and called for for the last few years anyway, and now seems the time... not that the governmental gridlock would ever let anything like that happen, or even a spending project for small equity home/apartments retrofitting would happen. Not to mention the raw materials needed for the batteries.
- URSpider94 5y ago
  Most of us here in CA already start charging at midnight, because of time of use power incentives. However, after using an app that showed the carbon burden of my charging, I learned that charging at midnight means I’m using relatively dirty power sources - there’s no solar at night, and the wind typically dies down. The greenest time to charge here in Northern CA is between 11AM and 1PM, when solar production is maximum.
darksaints 5y ago
They might be in a race to win certain markets, but they are most definitely both viable in their own respects in other markets. Fuel cells will likely never be used in watches and phones, and batteries will likely never be used in widebody jets.

londons_explore 5y ago

So far, batteries are pretty competitive on the "store energy for 24 hours" time horizon - where you need to power something at night with solar collected in the day, or evening out peaks and troughs in the electricity grid. But it isn't yet competitive with "store energy collected in the summer for use in the winter". For that usecase, far more energy must be stored for far fewer dollars to make it competitive vs just having a big fuel tank and a winter-only diesel generator. Keeping lakes of water for a few months for hydropower are also competitive - the storage capacity of a big lake on a mountain top is immense.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
If CATL and other LiFePO battery makers get them to 200wh/kg, which they teased in 2020, and they maintain the same cycle endurance, temperature range, safety, and cost advantages, it will be a real game changer. I've heard pumped water is like 90% efficient, but you need a gradient and space. Does wind power decrease in winter? I also remember schemes for making a huge solar farm in the Sahara and a superconducting conduit to Europe, and that was several paradigm shifts in solar cell performance ago (15 years). But almost all large countries seem to have a sufficiently sized desert to do this with (US, Russia, China). If solar gets good enough, and it is still on some prime parts of the economies of scale price drops, you don't care as much about long-distance transmission loss.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

But we're already going to be building those batteries anyway: Electric cars. What we need is a proper international standard for cars to be able to interact with the grid, to be able to charge and discharge based on grid conditions and pricing. Its stupid to have everyone coming home from work at 6pm and plugging in their cars to charge right at the existing afternoon demand peak, when solar is waning. Just getting those cars to delay charging until around midnight (allowing user override) would shift a huge amount of peak demand. Same concept if you don't use your car during the day - it should be able to discharge right into the morning and afternoon peaks, at your control. The user should be credited for this onto their car account. It might even make sense to have dedicated high-voltage circuitry in houses and apartment blocks, to be used for EVs, solar, etc. And we should really figure that out immediately since EV production is ramping up right now. We can't just rely on single automakers (Tesla) to work out these societal problems.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago
If we're going to try and ramp up battery production and technology, then in for a penny in for a pound. We should really decentralize the power grid enough to take the weight of these types of spikes, putting in batteries to the home (like the Tesla wall, but with more competition) and solar/wind/gravity generation to supplement grid power generation. It's a jobs program that's been needed and called for for the last few years anyway, and now seems the time... not that the governmental gridlock would ever let anything like that happen, or even a spending project for small equity home/apartments retrofitting would happen. Not to mention the raw materials needed for the batteries.
URSpider94 5y ago
Most of us here in CA already start charging at midnight, because of time of use power incentives. However, after using an app that showed the carbon burden of my charging, I learned that charging at midnight means I’m using relatively dirty power sources - there’s no solar at night, and the wind typically dies down. The greenest time to charge here in Northern CA is between 11AM and 1PM, when solar production is maximum.

darksaints 5y ago

They might be in a race to win certain markets, but they are most definitely both viable in their own respects in other markets. Fuel cells will likely never be used in watches and phones, and batteries will likely never be used in widebody jets.