4 ms·

Not wrong! However: - batteries: not available large-scale - thermal storage: potentially terribly inefficient (but as I said, yes it's at least something!)

Not wrong! However: - batteries: not available large-scale - thermal storage: potentially terribly inefficient (but as I said, yes it's at least something!) - pumped hydroelectric: where I'm from, only available to a tiny fraction of the country - Sabatier process methane: that's a possibility I guess, more inefficient though My point being, yes you're right, there's many more storage solutions, but hydrogen seems to trump most. Might as well use that as much as possible. > [0] I’m not a civil engineer and I can’t estimate the costs of upgrading existing methane pipes to cope with hydrogen, but people write about it being a thing The issue is also that the recipients would need to deal with the pure hydrogen they're getting. Residential boilers for natural gas can't, for example. New models are required.

Robotbeat 5y ago
The deal with hydrogen is that electrolyzers cost a lot of money & round trip efficiency is bad anyway, so you’ll want battery storage for daily cycling and a combination of solar, wind, and good distribution. A small amount of curtailment is fine, in fact most power plants don’t operate 24/7 even when fuel is cheap, and you could consider that “curtailment,” too, but it’s just accepted that it’s okay to idle a power plant if it’s output isn’t needed (the only difference with solar and wind is their fuel is free). But once you use batteries and good distribution, there isn’t much curtailment needed. Hydrogen electrolyzers just using “free” electricity 5% of the time is crazy expensive… it’s 20 times as expensive (from a capital standpoint) as running 24/7. And all of this is fine until we get to ~95% clean/renewable grids. Maybe at that point it’d be worth using hydrogen fir seasonal storage. But even then, you’ll still have some curtailment because otherwise your electrolyzer is too expensive. Check out https://model.energy https://model.energy for how this would work.

Robotbeat 5y ago

The deal with hydrogen is that electrolyzers cost a lot of money & round trip efficiency is bad anyway, so you’ll want battery storage for daily cycling and a combination of solar, wind, and good distribution. A small amount of curtailment is fine, in fact most power plants don’t operate 24/7 even when fuel is cheap, and you could consider that “curtailment,” too, but it’s just accepted that it’s okay to idle a power plant if it’s output isn’t needed (the only difference with solar and wind is their fuel is free). But once you use batteries and good distribution, there isn’t much curtailment needed. Hydrogen electrolyzers just using “free” electricity 5% of the time is crazy expensive… it’s 20 times as expensive (from a capital standpoint) as running 24/7. And all of this is fine until we get to ~95% clean/renewable grids. Maybe at that point it’d be worth using hydrogen fir seasonal storage. But even then, you’ll still have some curtailment because otherwise your electrolyzer is too expensive. Check out https://model.energy https://model.energy for how this would work.