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It would require a clean energy surplus and prices of clean energy to drop enough that the generated green hydrogen is cheaper than blue and grey hydrogen. Both

It would require a clean energy surplus and prices of clean energy to drop enough that the generated green hydrogen is cheaper than blue and grey hydrogen. Both are going to happen eventually. If you look at price trends, you can pretty much calculate when that might happen. A few decades from now, blue hydrogen will be more expensive than green hydrogen. The grey variety is likely to be heavily taxed with carbon taxes by then as well but even without that it will eventually end up being more expensive than green hydrogen. Grey hydrogen is only cheap if we let you dump 7kg of CO2 in the atmosphere for every kg of hydrogen for free. Capturing and storing that 7kg of CO2 is not going to be cheap either. 1kg of hydrogen is about 33 KWH of electricity with a decent fuel cell. It takes at least 3x the kwh of clean electricity to create that. So, about 100kwh. The price of grey hydrogen is about 0.70$ per kg. That's the dirties and cheapest variety. A more common price is > 2$/kg (still grey) in most parts of the world. Blue hydrogen costs more like 5$ per kg. So it's about 2-5x the cost of grey hydrogen. So, get price competitive with grey hydrogen, green hydrogen would have to be generated using clean energy costing less than 0.7 cents per kwh. Once we hit that price point, it will be the cheapest form of hydrogen. Current grid prices are way higher than that but a few recent bids for solar and wind plants came out at around 1.2 cents per kwh. So we're not that far off from hitting that price point.

state_less 5y ago
Your projections seem pretty good. Renewable energy is likely to continue to get cheaper, opening up power to gas possibilities (e.g. green hydrogen). Something I think is missing in these hydrogen discussions on energy storage is LiFePO4 cells. They give very good round trip efficiency, are simple to operate and have been plummeting in price. https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-100-kwh-for-the-first-time-in-2020-while-market-average-sits-at-137-kwh/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-... If prices continue to decline at the current trend, I’d expect to see large scale batteries used to store energy for use over multiple days. For small towns, this could be a relatively maintenance free and economical option to only draw from the grid on the days of the week when you have surplus wind or solar.
coderenegade 5y ago
Green hydrogen is being produced today at around $2.30/kg at Ningxia in China. The actual price they quote is $0.20 per cubic meter, [here](https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/chinese-company-starts-commissioning-worlds-largest-solar-powered-hydrogen-project/2-1-999379 https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/chinese-com...), which if you work backwards from a density of 0.089kg/m^3 at SSL conditions give roughly $2.24 per kg. That's a 200MW facility; a much larger 2.1 GW facility has just started construction in Inner Mongolia and is expected to come online in 2023. It's possible this facility reaches price parity with grey H2 just based on economies of scale. Also, 33kWh is the upper bound for the energy you get out of hydrogen. Practically, a fuel cell will get 60-70% of that, depending on the type. Electrolysis is around 90% efficient today, depending on the type of electrolyzer, and how you measure. SOECs can get better than 100% apparent efficiency by utilizing waste heat. Most sources I've seen for green H2 put the threshold for economic viability at around 2c per kWh. At that price you're still more expensive than grey, but you're at least within spitting distance, and this seems to line up with the Chinese figures.

state_less 5y ago

Your projections seem pretty good. Renewable energy is likely to continue to get cheaper, opening up power to gas possibilities (e.g. green hydrogen). Something I think is missing in these hydrogen discussions on energy storage is LiFePO4 cells. They give very good round trip efficiency, are simple to operate and have been plummeting in price. https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-100-kwh-for-the-first-time-in-2020-while-market-average-sits-at-137-kwh/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-... If prices continue to decline at the current trend, I’d expect to see large scale batteries used to store energy for use over multiple days. For small towns, this could be a relatively maintenance free and economical option to only draw from the grid on the days of the week when you have surplus wind or solar.

coderenegade 5y ago

Green hydrogen is being produced today at around $2.30/kg at Ningxia in China. The actual price they quote is $0.20 per cubic meter, [here](https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/chinese-company-starts-commissioning-worlds-largest-solar-powered-hydrogen-project/2-1-999379 https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/chinese-com...), which if you work backwards from a density of 0.089kg/m^3 at SSL conditions give roughly $2.24 per kg. That's a 200MW facility; a much larger 2.1 GW facility has just started construction in Inner Mongolia and is expected to come online in 2023. It's possible this facility reaches price parity with grey H2 just based on economies of scale. Also, 33kWh is the upper bound for the energy you get out of hydrogen. Practically, a fuel cell will get 60-70% of that, depending on the type. Electrolysis is around 90% efficient today, depending on the type of electrolyzer, and how you measure. SOECs can get better than 100% apparent efficiency by utilizing waste heat. Most sources I've seen for green H2 put the threshold for economic viability at around 2c per kWh. At that price you're still more expensive than grey, but you're at least within spitting distance, and this seems to line up with the Chinese figures.