4 ms·
It may be clunky, but is it more expensive? Other than pumped storage, the options you listed sound expensive per Watthour, and pumped storage is not available
by adrianN 5y ago
It may be clunky, but is it more expensive? Other than pumped storage, the options you listed sound expensive per Watthour, and pumped storage is not available everywhere. Hydrogen should have around 50% round trip efficiency from electricity back to electricity and it can (partially?) reuse existing infrastructure for natural gas.
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, compared to generation they are very expensive. But so is a hydrogen installation of any capacity. The trick is to have enough of it to be able to level the peaks in both demand and surplus production. You're not going to store days or weeks worth of capacity like that, the function is closer to a capacitor than it is to a long term storage medium.
- masklinn 5y ago> Hydrogen should have around 50% round trip efficiency from electricity back to electricity and it can (partially?) reuse existing infrastructure for natural gas. It can't though, not without significant studies and possibly rebuilding them entirely: the temperatures and / or pressures involved are different orders of magnitude, and nat gas does not embrittle. Industries have started trying to blend hydrogen and natural gas to transport the hydrogen, and even that's turning out to be rather risky[0] unless the line was designed specifically with that use in mind. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452321618302683 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245232161...
- adrianN 5y agoThat's unfortunate. I guess one has to upgrade the hydrogen to Methane to be able to seamlessly use the existing infrastructure. That lowers the efficiency a bit and increases capex. I'd like to see some studies that try to estimate end to end cost for Power-to-Methane systems, but I'm not aware of any.