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Interestingly if we have significant excess production from intermittent sources we can reduce our battery needs. Last I read the best cost/benefit ratio was so
by crowbahr 5y ago
Interestingly if we have significant excess production from intermittent sources we can reduce our battery needs. Last I read the best cost/benefit ratio was something like 7x the energy production.
That said nuclear base load makes a _lot_ more sense.
- Pxtl 5y agoI point to nuclear power simply because it's already proven to work. Overbuilt wind/solar should work in theory, but primarily nuclear-powered grids exist right now.
- mrep 5y agoWhere did you read that? Methane which already powers 40% of the US electrical grid can be created and then turned back in electricity in a Electricity→Gas→Electricity process with a round trip efficiency of 30–38% [0]. There is no way you'd need 7x production when you can use surpluses to make methane or hydrogen. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
- crowbahr 5y agoThe goal was to have a long term hydrogen, mid/peaker battery setup with the minimum cost while providing for the entire grid. Unfortunately I didn't take notes as to what the source was and I read this about a year ago. Google has been entirely useless as I've tried to dig it back up.
- Pxtl 5y agoThere's a whole spectrum of energy storage tech where the tradeoff is efficiency vs cost. At the extreme end of high cost with high efficiency you have magnetic energy storage, then slightly less-efficient but lower cost you have batteries, then in the middle you have things like synthetic methane, cracking hydrogen, and pumping water up-hill, and at the bottom for lowest-cost and lowest-efficiency you have compressed air. Finding the right balance of overbuilding supply and storage efficiency is going to be a long process.