4 ms·

If whole solar or wind farms find themselves sitting idle someone will drop off some containers nearby to split water into hydrogen or run a data center or some

If whole solar or wind farms find themselves sitting idle someone will drop off some containers nearby to split water into hydrogen or run a data center or something else that drinks power and skip the grid middle-man. Over-idle is not going to be a real issue; someone will always find a way to use of excess power.

anonporridge 4y ago
Yeah, that's demand response. Bitcoin miners are the key players innovating in that space right now. It's something that can very easily be packaged up in portable containers. I believe Chinese miners for years had a yearly migration to soak up massive amounts of excess hydro power during the rainy season that would have been otherwise wasted. There might be a place for more generic computation datacenters, but they would have to find a relatively unique customer that has compute loads that can be turned off and on at a moment's notice, and potentially be down for days, weeks, and even months. There's probably a startup to be founded here, if you can figure out how to severely undercut equivalent AWS services to justify the lack of uptime guarantees. I don't know enough about hydrogen production to know if it can be quickly spun up/down to suck up variable load. I imagine gas transport infrastructure is going to be the biggest blocker.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Over idle already is a real issue. Who is going to build a hydrogen generator or data center with a 80% idle time, operating only 12-4 PM?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Another use is thermal batteries. Dump the power into a resistively heated mass and use that for industrial purposes. Thermal storage can be incredibly cheap per stored unit of energy.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I agree that there are solutions, I just think it is silly when people propose these high capital solutions. E.g. run a desalination plant 4 hours a day, ect. The real solution, like you mention, is more capacity + storage. Pumped storage is my personal favorite, as it is much cheaper than batteries for anything more than 2 hours of power/day. Pumped seawater has a pretty small footprint.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  Anyone for whom the ROCE is better than 1% (per the given scenario). I doubt that data centers will be built, but there are other uses beside hydrogen -> ammonia->urea. Desalination, for instance. Carbon capture, to make money in the carbon credit markets. Even at 4 hours a day, mechanical capture with plausible costs can compete with forests.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I sincerely hope it gets there. My understanding is that carbon capture equipment isn't currently economically viable with 100% uptime

anonporridge 4y ago

Yeah, that's demand response. Bitcoin miners are the key players innovating in that space right now. It's something that can very easily be packaged up in portable containers. I believe Chinese miners for years had a yearly migration to soak up massive amounts of excess hydro power during the rainy season that would have been otherwise wasted. There might be a place for more generic computation datacenters, but they would have to find a relatively unique customer that has compute loads that can be turned off and on at a moment's notice, and potentially be down for days, weeks, and even months. There's probably a startup to be founded here, if you can figure out how to severely undercut equivalent AWS services to justify the lack of uptime guarantees. I don't know enough about hydrogen production to know if it can be quickly spun up/down to suck up variable load. I imagine gas transport infrastructure is going to be the biggest blocker.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Over idle already is a real issue. Who is going to build a hydrogen generator or data center with a 80% idle time, operating only 12-4 PM?

pfdietz 4y ago
Another use is thermal batteries. Dump the power into a resistively heated mass and use that for industrial purposes. Thermal storage can be incredibly cheap per stored unit of energy.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I agree that there are solutions, I just think it is silly when people propose these high capital solutions. E.g. run a desalination plant 4 hours a day, ect. The real solution, like you mention, is more capacity + storage. Pumped storage is my personal favorite, as it is much cheaper than batteries for anything more than 2 hours of power/day. Pumped seawater has a pretty small footprint.
tuatoru 4y ago
Anyone for whom the ROCE is better than 1% (per the given scenario). I doubt that data centers will be built, but there are other uses beside hydrogen -> ammonia->urea. Desalination, for instance. Carbon capture, to make money in the carbon credit markets. Even at 4 hours a day, mechanical capture with plausible costs can compete with forests.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I sincerely hope it gets there. My understanding is that carbon capture equipment isn't currently economically viable with 100% uptime