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The author misses a perhaps unintuitive point: the cost of storage depends also on the cost of energy. By the time you've overbuilt 2x, a full extra 100% of you

The author misses a perhaps unintuitive point: the cost of storage depends also on the cost of energy. By the time you've overbuilt 2x, a full extra 100% of your demand is sitting around literally free at odd hours. Traditionally, moving energy around means batteries, and yes maybe your battery costs more than just generating new electricity from a less efficient new solar panel at odd hours. But batteries are optimized for energy being expensive, where losses are wasteful. Consider this really simple, dirt cheap alternative: plug your free energy into a pool of water and collect the hydrogen from it. Burn the hydrogen later, and point the light at your idle solar panels. It's hellishly inefficient, but I repeat: the energy is free. You are only minimizing capital costs, at least until other people catch up and start shifting load some other way. The sane point on this curve probably looks something along the lines of a mix of batteries and synthetic fuels powering existing fossil fuel plants. The nice thing about going all the way to synthetic fuels and not hydrogen is that long term storage becomes trivially cheap, so it starts offsetting your winter load as well.

Matumio 2y ago
It's a very long stretch from "generate hydrogen" to "powering existing fossil fuel plants". The most unlikely part is not even creating renewable fuels (that is a stretch already), but the idea that those fuels are going to be compatible with existing plants and infrastructure. It's not impossible, but it would probably be the least economical way to go about it. I recommend reading some industrydecarbonization.com articles for going a bit more in-depth about the why.
- akamaka 2y ago
  Hydrogen-ready power plants are already being built, so that’s actually the least difficult part of the problem. The current bottleneck is actually producing the hydrogen, and next will be building the transport infrastructure. https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/hydrogen-ready-power-plants-arent-actually-ready-for-hydrogen/ https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/hydrogen-ready-power-plan...
pyrale 2y ago
> It's hellishly inefficient, but I repeat: the energy is free. Can you give pointers about who gives away hydrogen generation systems for free? Because the cost of energy usually factors in the cost of amortizing equipment required to produce and distribute it. > The nice thing about going all the way to synthetic fuels and not hydrogen is that long term storage becomes trivially cheap Once you've financed all of the horribly expensive capital expenditure, and provided you disregard that operating costs actually require paying people to monitor, repair and operate that infrastructure, the rest is basically free.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Can you give pointers about who gives away hydrogen generation systems for free? If you don't care about efficiency (because the electricity is free), a 9 year old can make hydrogen generators out of old pencils and jam jars. Citation: me, I did that.
  - pyrale 2y ago
    I can also make some methane depending on what's on the lunch menu, but that doesn't mean cheap renewable natural gas is a solved problem.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Do you really not understand the point I'm making here? The technical skills needed to make a device that turns water and electricity into hydrogen are so minimal that they can be performed by someone too young for you to be allowed to employ them. When you don't care about efficiency, hydrogen is trivial. The limiting factor is how much electricity you can shove through the water, not human effort.
      - hnaccount_rng 2y ago
        To be fair the problem with hydrogen isn't the production (that is ~free, once you have free energy at least some amount of time) but it's storage and then usage. Storage is a fundamental physics problem. Usage is something where low efficiency may or may not be a problem, depending on the over provisioning that we applied at the generation and storage stages.
perlgeek 2y ago
Less than 1% of all the hydrogen produced worldwide is from "green" sources [1]. If your dirt cheap alternative is really so dirt cheap, why doesn't anybody do it? [1]: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-hydrogen-review-2024/hydrogen-production https://www.iea.org/reports/global-hydrogen-review-2024/hydr...
- Veedrac 2y ago
  We don't yet live in a world where electricity is reliably overproduced by 2x. Renewables are ~100% of the US's new electricity production, but still only a small fraction of its total electricity production.

Matumio 2y ago

It's a very long stretch from "generate hydrogen" to "powering existing fossil fuel plants". The most unlikely part is not even creating renewable fuels (that is a stretch already), but the idea that those fuels are going to be compatible with existing plants and infrastructure. It's not impossible, but it would probably be the least economical way to go about it. I recommend reading some industrydecarbonization.com articles for going a bit more in-depth about the why.

akamaka 2y ago
Hydrogen-ready power plants are already being built, so that’s actually the least difficult part of the problem. The current bottleneck is actually producing the hydrogen, and next will be building the transport infrastructure. https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/hydrogen-ready-power-plants-arent-actually-ready-for-hydrogen/ https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/hydrogen-ready-power-plan...

pyrale 2y ago

> It's hellishly inefficient, but I repeat: the energy is free. Can you give pointers about who gives away hydrogen generation systems for free? Because the cost of energy usually factors in the cost of amortizing equipment required to produce and distribute it. > The nice thing about going all the way to synthetic fuels and not hydrogen is that long term storage becomes trivially cheap Once you've financed all of the horribly expensive capital expenditure, and provided you disregard that operating costs actually require paying people to monitor, repair and operate that infrastructure, the rest is basically free.

ben_w 2y ago
> Can you give pointers about who gives away hydrogen generation systems for free? If you don't care about efficiency (because the electricity is free), a 9 year old can make hydrogen generators out of old pencils and jam jars. Citation: me, I did that.
- pyrale 2y ago
  I can also make some methane depending on what's on the lunch menu, but that doesn't mean cheap renewable natural gas is a solved problem.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Do you really not understand the point I'm making here? The technical skills needed to make a device that turns water and electricity into hydrogen are so minimal that they can be performed by someone too young for you to be allowed to employ them. When you don't care about efficiency, hydrogen is trivial. The limiting factor is how much electricity you can shove through the water, not human effort.
    - hnaccount_rng 2y ago
      To be fair the problem with hydrogen isn't the production (that is ~free, once you have free energy at least some amount of time) but it's storage and then usage. Storage is a fundamental physics problem. Usage is something where low efficiency may or may not be a problem, depending on the over provisioning that we applied at the generation and storage stages.

perlgeek 2y ago

Less than 1% of all the hydrogen produced worldwide is from "green" sources [1]. If your dirt cheap alternative is really so dirt cheap, why doesn't anybody do it? [1]: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-hydrogen-review-2024/hydrogen-production https://www.iea.org/reports/global-hydrogen-review-2024/hydr...

Veedrac 2y ago
We don't yet live in a world where electricity is reliably overproduced by 2x. Renewables are ~100% of the US's new electricity production, but still only a small fraction of its total electricity production.