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It is irrelevant because the proposition is to use hydrogen to store surplus electricity, not to use hydrogen made from natural gas.
by adrianN 4y ago
It is irrelevant because the proposition is to use hydrogen to store surplus electricity, not to use hydrogen made from natural gas.
- Manuel_D 4y agoThis is exactly the point I'm making: storing hydrogen for electricity storage has to be done through electrolysis, because steam reformation emits carbon dioxide. But we don't currently use electrolysis for our hydrogen production, because it's not cost competitive with steam reformation. It's not cost competitive with existing energy storage either.
- adrianN 4y agoDude, we use natural gas because that is cheap. Why is it cheap? Because we externalize the costs of climate change. By that argument we should ditch nuclear and burn lignite. It's a lot cheaper and proven technology. Nobody claimed electrolysis is cheaper than using natural gas. Nobody even claimed that electrolysis is cheaper than batteries at small scales. The claim is that electrolysis is proven technology that is a lot simpler to scale that lithium batteries.
- Manuel_D 4y agoI agree we should include the cost of climate change. That's why nuclear is cheaper than solar and wind: because solar and wind require either energy storage or fossil fuels. And since energy storage at grid scale does not exist, solar and wind contains the cost of climate change. > The claim is that electrolysis is proven technology that is a lot simpler to scale that lithium batteries. And my point is that this is false. Electrolysis is not proven technology at scale, almost all hydrogen is produced through steam reformation. No, it does not scale better than lithium ion batteries. If we try to build it at scale it'll make solar and wind more expensive than nuclear power.
- adrianN 4y agoYou provide zero supporting arguments for your point. Megawatt electrolyzers exist today. They existed ten years ago. They don't use anything in large quantities of which supply is limited. You give no reason why we can't just build more of them.
- Manuel_D 4y agoA megawatt is basically nothing. Average load for electricity in the US is 500 GW. How much did that megawatt electrolyzed cost? Does it also include the cost of converting that hydrogen back into electricity? And remember this cost is on top of the cost of generating the stored energy in the first place.
- adrianN 4y agoYou still didn't explain how "build more" is not an option, which is, you know, the original claim that we're debating in this comment chain.
- Manuel_D 4y agoBut is it cheaper to build more electeolysis storage, and lots of overproduction in renewables? Well, until someone actually offers hydrogen storage commerically, there's no price. If it were cheap, we wouldn't be using steam reformation.