2 ms·
Batteries are the most expensive storage medium. No utility will use those to keep more than a few minutes or hours of backup. Pumped hydro is cheap and reliabl
by ncmncm 5y ago
Batteries are the most expensive storage medium. No utility will use those to keep more than a few minutes or hours of backup. Pumped hydro is cheap and reliable, but each site has a strict upper limit on how much it can store.
Synthetic anhydrous ammonia, and hydrogen, are the favored utility-scale media. They can be stored, but more importantly they can also be shipped in from the tropics, and most importantly can be sold when the tanks are full.
- sudosysgen 5y agoAmmonia is not great for shipping to due low gravimetric energy density. At the same time, ammonia cycle efficiency in a fuel cell is low, and fuel cells are expensive. Hydrogen is a shipping nightmare, as you well know. So at this point we are comparing the cost of a full NH3/H2 backup energy generation, plus the cost of a full renewable energy grid with at least 50% overproduction and hours of battery storage, plus the cost of storing 100 million tons of NH3/NH2, as well as the cost of NH3/NH2 production, and funding of generally idle overproduction in countries with a better climate (!!)
- ncmncm 5y agoLiquified hydrogen carried at atmospheric pressure just needs insulated tanks. We already have a lot of experience shipping liquified natural gas. It can probably be carried in the same tanks. You can burn ammonia where you burn natural gas today. It is probably not suitable as fuel for aircraft, but otherwise it is entirely good enough. Ships burning bunker oil can be converted burn ammonia just by changing out tankage and plumbing. But ammonia fuel cells will only get better, never worse. Building out a H2/NH3 system will be massively expensive, but a tiny fraction of the cost of that much nuke capacity. And, the H2 and NH3 are valuable industrial feedstock, so none of the production capacity ever sits idle.