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This is great news. Wind turbines make a lot of sense for the windy UK. The problem of energy storage when the wind isn't blowing, remains. The energy storage

This is great news. Wind turbines make a lot of sense for the windy UK. The problem of energy storage when the wind isn't blowing, remains. The energy storage section in "Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air" [1] gives a good overview of how storage could work in the UK. What I don't think it covers, however, is creating hydrogen through water electrolysis, which Siemens Gamesa are looking at, even integrating the process within the turbines themselves. [2] The hydrogen could be stored, or used in the UK's heating system that currently runs mostly on natural gas. There have been some pilot projects introducing a hydrogen mix into the existing gas system. [3] Lowering dependence on natural gas would be good for not only the environment, but also for energy security, thinking about the recent issue with getting gas from Russia. Hydrogen-blend boilers are already on the market. I don't know how much work it would take for an 100pc hydrogen gas system. I hear there would be issues with the smaller hydrogen molecules escaping from our existing gas pipe infrastructure. [1] https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_186.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_186.shtml [2] https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/hybrid-and-storage/green-hydrogen https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/h... [3] https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/hydrogen-blending-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/hydrogen-blending-wh...

gilbetron 5y ago
There's lots of great research and progress on all kinds of energy storage solutions, my current favorite is the iron-air battery: https://youtu.be/Ui6wWzxCrQ8 https://youtu.be/Ui6wWzxCrQ8
thehappypm 5y ago
The market might step in. If you can buy cheap batteries, buy cheap surplus energy, and sell at a profit to stabilize the grid…
dmitri1981 5y ago
There are better ways to use hydrogen than burning it in boilers. Check out the hydrogen ladder https://mobile.twitter.com/mliebreich/status/1426900737313984514?lang=en-GB https://mobile.twitter.com/mliebreich/status/142690073731398... While storing electricity is very hard at grid scale at the moment, another approach to solve the intermittency problem is using interconnectors. By connecting to other grids using uncorrelated energy sources, we can balance energy supply and demand across space rather than across time with storage.
- samwillis 5y ago
  I believe the idea is that it solves two problems simultaneously, using excess wind when it’s available and making our domestic gas supplies “greener”. The vast majority of uk homes have gas powered central heating (hot water radiators), there is no good route forward to upgrade/replace all of this infrastructure to make it “green”. You can’t economically run a hot water central heating system using an electric heat pump, the required temperatures are too high, so you either need to rip it out and replace the whole system with a modern one or at least either replace all the radiators with underfloor heating or masive wall mounted radiators (very expensive for the 10s millions of homes, this isn’t just a new boiler). A hybrid hydrogen/natural gas or synthetic gas is a way to go green but keep the existing infrastructure either with a new boiler or hopefully minor component changes. So while it may not technically be “best usage” in the academic sense, it could be argued that it is a sensible use economically for the UK.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    If you have to use electricity to produce hydrogen it is more efficient to instead use that electricity directly for hot water and a heat pump for space heating. There is no need to 'rip it out and replace the whole system' to use a heat pump; an air to air heat pump as used in many Scandinavian homes can be fitted at much lower cost without disturbing the existing central heating at all. I don't understand why heat pump solutions in the UK are so expensive. An air to air heat pump from Samsung can be had for a thousand pounds and installation for another five hundred here in Norway; see https://www.elkjop.no/product/hjem-og-husholdning/oppvarming/varmepumpe/215947/samsung-nordic-home-25-varmepumpe-nordichome25 https://www.elkjop.no/product/hjem-og-husholdning/oppvarming... for instance. This is rated for room areas up to 100 m2 so plenty enough for the average UK home. Buy two if you want the upstairs heated separately.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      That heats one 100m² room, doesn't it? A typical English¹ house has several rooms, and is heated by a central boiler and a pump circulating hot water through radiators. Converting the house to air-based heating would require several such units, or else some other type of unit and pipes to move the air to the various rooms. ¹ Used intentionally, I know electric resistive heating is/was more common in parts of Scotland.
pydry 5y ago
Without hot air is pretty badly dated. I kind of wish people would stop referring to it. The author died before the economics of wind (and more recently, batteries) started making sense. In the book he persisted in sarcastically calling them "windmills".
- samwillis 5y ago
  True, although still worth reading albeit with that in mind. There is a project to get it updated (was on HN last month) https://climate.lifeitself.us/without-hot-air/ https://climate.lifeitself.us/without-hot-air/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056343
- heurisko 5y ago
  There are some parts of the book that are perennial, namely discussion of the UK's geography, which is relevant to energy storage.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Some parts are perennial but he still uses math that mixes in 15 year old assumptions with unchanging assumptions.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Aren’t they windmills? I’m not familiar with this being derogatory. It’s all I can think to call them.
  - sgt101 5y ago
    They aren't milling...
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      Are they actually farming?
Schiendelman 5y ago
The cheapest, most well understood way of handling “when the wind isn’t blowing” - which is almost a red herring given how different weather patterns are across a grid - remains building more wind farms and variably pricing electricity.
- pydry 5y ago
  Batteries also have started to make sense due to recent plunges in their cost. Hawaii / California are doing this. Hydrogen makes negative sense due to insane storage costs but gas/oil companies still like promoting the idea, probably due to their sunk costs in natgas investments.
  - heurisko 5y ago
    Could you post references regarding the issues you have raised, as it contradicts other claims below that sees hydrogen storage as unavoidable.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
      - algo_trader 5y ago
        You have inserted this link about 10 times in the last 24hrs. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=bryanlarsen%20electrify&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... Please stop. Also - the book, while correct, is not terribly original. It does not really address the more difficult segments.
        bryanlarsen 5y ago
        I wish I could link to specific chapters. That's the thing about books vs articles, they tend to touch on a lot of subjects. > It does not really address the more difficult segments. Like what?
bryanlarsen 5y ago
Much less storage is required than most people think. Battery storage is entirely economically feasible. Cheaper ones like hydro are even better. Norway & Britain just completed a new interconnector so that Norway can use Britain's cheap wind power and Britain can use Norway's cheap hydro storage. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
- pydry 5y ago
  Offshore wind is also a lot less intermittent and tends to produce when onshore isnt (& vice versa). This wind farm was about half the cost per MWh of hinkley point C as opposed to onshore which is 1/4-1/3. However, the output is a lot more stable than onshore.
mattferderer 5y ago
> The problem of energy storage when the wind isn't blowing, remains. Any thoughts on trying to exceed average demand & sell off excess at lower costs to services that can be ready & waiting for excess lower cost electricity? To me this makes more sense than investing in storage resources. Obviously some storage resources would be needed & you couldn't only rely on a single type of generation from one geographical location.

gilbetron 5y ago

There's lots of great research and progress on all kinds of energy storage solutions, my current favorite is the iron-air battery: https://youtu.be/Ui6wWzxCrQ8 https://youtu.be/Ui6wWzxCrQ8

thehappypm 5y ago

The market might step in. If you can buy cheap batteries, buy cheap surplus energy, and sell at a profit to stabilize the grid…

dmitri1981 5y ago

There are better ways to use hydrogen than burning it in boilers. Check out the hydrogen ladder https://mobile.twitter.com/mliebreich/status/1426900737313984514?lang=en-GB https://mobile.twitter.com/mliebreich/status/142690073731398... While storing electricity is very hard at grid scale at the moment, another approach to solve the intermittency problem is using interconnectors. By connecting to other grids using uncorrelated energy sources, we can balance energy supply and demand across space rather than across time with storage.

samwillis 5y ago
I believe the idea is that it solves two problems simultaneously, using excess wind when it’s available and making our domestic gas supplies “greener”. The vast majority of uk homes have gas powered central heating (hot water radiators), there is no good route forward to upgrade/replace all of this infrastructure to make it “green”. You can’t economically run a hot water central heating system using an electric heat pump, the required temperatures are too high, so you either need to rip it out and replace the whole system with a modern one or at least either replace all the radiators with underfloor heating or masive wall mounted radiators (very expensive for the 10s millions of homes, this isn’t just a new boiler). A hybrid hydrogen/natural gas or synthetic gas is a way to go green but keep the existing infrastructure either with a new boiler or hopefully minor component changes. So while it may not technically be “best usage” in the academic sense, it could be argued that it is a sensible use economically for the UK.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  If you have to use electricity to produce hydrogen it is more efficient to instead use that electricity directly for hot water and a heat pump for space heating. There is no need to 'rip it out and replace the whole system' to use a heat pump; an air to air heat pump as used in many Scandinavian homes can be fitted at much lower cost without disturbing the existing central heating at all. I don't understand why heat pump solutions in the UK are so expensive. An air to air heat pump from Samsung can be had for a thousand pounds and installation for another five hundred here in Norway; see https://www.elkjop.no/product/hjem-og-husholdning/oppvarming/varmepumpe/215947/samsung-nordic-home-25-varmepumpe-nordichome25 https://www.elkjop.no/product/hjem-og-husholdning/oppvarming... for instance. This is rated for room areas up to 100 m2 so plenty enough for the average UK home. Buy two if you want the upstairs heated separately.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    That heats one 100m² room, doesn't it? A typical English¹ house has several rooms, and is heated by a central boiler and a pump circulating hot water through radiators. Converting the house to air-based heating would require several such units, or else some other type of unit and pipes to move the air to the various rooms. ¹ Used intentionally, I know electric resistive heating is/was more common in parts of Scotland.

pydry 5y ago

Without hot air is pretty badly dated. I kind of wish people would stop referring to it. The author died before the economics of wind (and more recently, batteries) started making sense. In the book he persisted in sarcastically calling them "windmills".

samwillis 5y ago
True, although still worth reading albeit with that in mind. There is a project to get it updated (was on HN last month) https://climate.lifeitself.us/without-hot-air/ https://climate.lifeitself.us/without-hot-air/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056343
heurisko 5y ago
There are some parts of the book that are perennial, namely discussion of the UK's geography, which is relevant to energy storage.
- pydry 5y ago
  Some parts are perennial but he still uses math that mixes in 15 year old assumptions with unchanging assumptions.
jtbayly 5y ago
Aren’t they windmills? I’m not familiar with this being derogatory. It’s all I can think to call them.
- sgt101 5y ago
  They aren't milling...
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Are they actually farming?

Schiendelman 5y ago

The cheapest, most well understood way of handling “when the wind isn’t blowing” - which is almost a red herring given how different weather patterns are across a grid - remains building more wind farms and variably pricing electricity.

pydry 5y ago
Batteries also have started to make sense due to recent plunges in their cost. Hawaii / California are doing this. Hydrogen makes negative sense due to insane storage costs but gas/oil companies still like promoting the idea, probably due to their sunk costs in natgas investments.
- heurisko 5y ago
  Could you post references regarding the issues you have raised, as it contradicts other claims below that sees hydrogen storage as unavoidable.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
    - algo_trader 5y ago
      You have inserted this link about 10 times in the last 24hrs. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=bryanlarsen%20electrify&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... Please stop. Also - the book, while correct, is not terribly original. It does not really address the more difficult segments.
      - bryanlarsen 5y ago
        I wish I could link to specific chapters. That's the thing about books vs articles, they tend to touch on a lot of subjects. > It does not really address the more difficult segments. Like what?

bryanlarsen 5y ago

Much less storage is required than most people think. Battery storage is entirely economically feasible. Cheaper ones like hydro are even better. Norway & Britain just completed a new interconnector so that Norway can use Britain's cheap wind power and Britain can use Norway's cheap hydro storage. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify

pydry 5y ago
Offshore wind is also a lot less intermittent and tends to produce when onshore isnt (& vice versa). This wind farm was about half the cost per MWh of hinkley point C as opposed to onshore which is 1/4-1/3. However, the output is a lot more stable than onshore.

mattferderer 5y ago

> The problem of energy storage when the wind isn't blowing, remains. Any thoughts on trying to exceed average demand & sell off excess at lower costs to services that can be ready & waiting for excess lower cost electricity? To me this makes more sense than investing in storage resources. Obviously some storage resources would be needed & you couldn't only rely on a single type of generation from one geographical location.