3 ms·

I hear people talking about intermittent operation of electrolyzers, but this sounds to me like the stupidest thing to do: * Intermittent operation means you n

I hear people talking about intermittent operation of electrolyzers, but this sounds to me like the stupidest thing to do: * Intermittent operation means you need to either build a huge buffer tank, or overprovision your transport infrastructure compared to your average production rate * Your customers need to deal with a less reliable supplier * Intermittent operation means shorter maintenance intervals, more stress on your electrolysis units and higher demand on your BoP * When you've put down a huge capex, the marginal cost of not running the plant is quite high, so it makes sense to run 24/7 even at high energy prices

pfdietz 2y ago
It's talked about because the sources are intermittent. There will be large price swings in the grid of the future; hydrogen can act as a source of dispatchable demand. For dispatchable demand you want a reasonable application with minimal capex per watt (and also low fixed opex), and hydrogen fits that bill. What other application do you think has as low a capex per watt as electrolysis? Maybe heating thermal batteries? But that's not useful for long term smoothing. Data centers have something like 100x the capex/watt of hydrogen.