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Here's the thing: batteries only work for day-to-night storage. The math is simple: if you buy a Tesla megapack and charge it daily and sell the energy every ni

Here's the thing: batteries only work for day-to-night storage. The math is simple: if you buy a Tesla megapack and charge it daily and sell the energy every night, then you need to charge 10 cents/kwh every single night for 10 years to break even. If you want to charge and discharge it only once a year (i.e. summer to winter), then you need to charge $35/kwh. The average cost of the kwh in the US was 14 cents in 2021. That means we need hydrogen. I also did a bit of math to estimate the cost of shipping from, say, Australia, to Asia. Assuming LNG carriers can be converted to liquid H2 carriers, with similar operating costs, then it comes out at about 2 cents/kwh. If Australia and the US build lots and lots of solar capacity, then making H2 in the summer and shipping it to the other hemisphere sounds doable. I think that multibillionaire from India is up to something [1]. [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3165314/mukesh-ambanis-us75-billion-plan-turn-india-hydrogen-hub https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3165314/mu...

gameswithgo 5y ago
Hydrogen is one of many available solutions. Don’t make the mistake of getting too focused on one thing. Anyway the USA will have have such a percentage of solar any time soon that we need the more radical solutions imminently, though now is a good time to start planning
- pfdietz 5y ago
  When addressing the "renewables can't do it" holdouts, demonstrating that a solution (hydrogen) exists is all that's needed. If there's a better way to get renewables to 100%, of course that's great. Hydrogen will almost certainly be part of the solution, if only as a very dispatchable form of demand to supply hydrogen-consuming industries. And once you're storing hydrogen from that it's a small step to allowing some of it to be burned in backup turbines when very unusual situations occur (like that Texas winter storm.)
- credit_guy 5y ago
  > Hydrogen is one of many available solutions. There are many solutions, but they just don't work. Here's a graph from wikipedia with alternative energy storage technologies [1]. On the horizontal scale it's the storage capacity, on the vertical scale the time horizon. All but 2 technologies have both capacity less than 10 GWh and time horizon less than one month. The only 2 technologies with both higher capacity and horizon are hydrogen and methane (both power to gas). If you care about climate change, hydrogen is superior, for the simple reason that LNG carriers lose methane during transportation, and methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. Hydrogen is superior for 2 reasons: any leakage is inconsequential, and any Exxon-Valdez type of disaster results in zero ecological impact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage#/media/File:Available_storage_technologies,_their_capacity_and_discharge_time.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage#/media/File:Ava...

gameswithgo 5y ago

Hydrogen is one of many available solutions. Don’t make the mistake of getting too focused on one thing. Anyway the USA will have have such a percentage of solar any time soon that we need the more radical solutions imminently, though now is a good time to start planning

pfdietz 5y ago
When addressing the "renewables can't do it" holdouts, demonstrating that a solution (hydrogen) exists is all that's needed. If there's a better way to get renewables to 100%, of course that's great. Hydrogen will almost certainly be part of the solution, if only as a very dispatchable form of demand to supply hydrogen-consuming industries. And once you're storing hydrogen from that it's a small step to allowing some of it to be burned in backup turbines when very unusual situations occur (like that Texas winter storm.)
credit_guy 5y ago
> Hydrogen is one of many available solutions. There are many solutions, but they just don't work. Here's a graph from wikipedia with alternative energy storage technologies [1]. On the horizontal scale it's the storage capacity, on the vertical scale the time horizon. All but 2 technologies have both capacity less than 10 GWh and time horizon less than one month. The only 2 technologies with both higher capacity and horizon are hydrogen and methane (both power to gas). If you care about climate change, hydrogen is superior, for the simple reason that LNG carriers lose methane during transportation, and methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. Hydrogen is superior for 2 reasons: any leakage is inconsequential, and any Exxon-Valdez type of disaster results in zero ecological impact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage#/media/File:Available_storage_technologies,_their_capacity_and_discharge_time.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage#/media/File:Ava...