It seems that nuclear power for base generation and natural gas for peak generation would be the best thing to do at the current time while still experimenting on other methods. It is beneficial to have data on how different methods perform.
“...like its lower energy density compared to natural gas, and the prospective need for a whole new infrastructure of pipelines, power plants, delivery trucks and consumer appliances.”
There WILL NEVER be hydrogen consumer appliances - they will be all-electric. The closest that the hydrogen ever gets to the consumers, assuming it becomes more than a pipe dream, will be central stations converting it back to electricity.
“The Royal Society had collected weather data for Britain for some 37 years, which had revealed that there are worst-case wind and sun “droughts,” comparable to rain droughts, that may occur only once every 20 years or more. A storage solution to back up wind and solar electricity generation without fossil fuel back-up needs to cover these worst-case droughts.”
While it’s good they went back for 37 years, why not 200 years, or 500 years? The reason is VOLCANOES, with fallout that stays in the atmosphere for years and which blocks sunlight, which also lowers wind speeds, and results in overall cooling (as in much higher ELECTRIC heating requirements).
Even the people who might appear to look as though they’re doing a good job trying to flush out the cost still have NO CLUE as to risk they’re putting people at.
With the watermelon Marxists our energy policy is moonbeams and unicorn farts. The Marxists at the top of the “climate change” cult know very well they are lying and conning the American people as they whip their zombie acolytes into a frenzy. I suspect the Aztec rulers and priests knew that the sun and rain would come regardless of how many they sacrificed in terror inducing bloody rituals. It it kept them on top until Cortez came along and most Mexican tribes joined Cortez in destroying the Aztec Empire. The scum that usurped or republic will get their judgement day at the hands of the American people.
I never understand why the liberals oppose nuclear .
Nuclear produces zero greenhouse gases. Based on the liberals own criteria of wanting to reduce these dreaded greenhouse gases, nuclear should definitely be in the mix of energy sources that they promote.
“$6/kgH2 converts to $48/MMBTU”
To help some here with the math. MMBTU is 1 million BTUs, and it is the common unit for pricing natural gas when it is burned - so in the above, you would pay $48 to buy enough natural gas to produce 1 million BTUs of heat.
To convert that to a wholesale cost of electrical power in dollars per kwh, it’s very easy - just divide by 5 (which assumes 50% efficiency at a natural gas power plant). So with $48 for natural gas, you would get roughly 10 cents/kwh of power. Sounds cheap, but that’s back at the power plant. So add another 5 to 10 cents to that price for distribution to end-users. Still not too bad...until you see what the REAL cost will be with hydrogen (up to $800 per MMBTU in this article).
The secret power of H2 use is that it eliminates the need to truck and store the fuel. Generate it at the point of need — the filling station. Use leccy to generate.
Greenies will oppose this in any way possible ‘cause they could not care less about environment. They only want to destroy Western civilization; and, expensive energy will do that.
Storing H2 in caverns is a no go, as stone is too porous to contain H2 at useful pressures for any length of time. If you line the cavern with steel to lower the losses, the cost will be exorbitant.
This is stupid.
The cost of storage is a problem only if you centralize production.
Hydrogen is everywhere (obviously).
I do believe that I may see in my lifetime the beginning of a transition, a growing movement with people converting their POVs to hydrogen and their homes to hydrogen heating.
And I also believe that the government will be there every step of the way to inhibit such a movement, the restrictions on lithium 6 being one such inhibitor...
Aside from Quaise Energy, which is working on deep drilling, I don’t hear much about superheated steam from geothermal sources. Somewhat related to this article is the amount of land various renewable resources will require.
https://www.quaise.energy/news/clean-energy-must-use-less-land
Hydrogen is probably the worst way possible to store energy. It only exists because it keeps the business as usual of energy companies selling a product from centralized or commodity controlled processes.
https://natron.energy/our-technology
The future is distributed generation and storage. Shipping container sized batteries that are not lithium and can work from -40C to 100+C while doing 50,000 cycles and 10C plus discharge and charge rates are the way forward. It’s buy low sell high on the electron market. With virtually unlimited cycle life you can buy power in the middle of the night when the wind is howling for $20 a megawatt hour or less and then in the afternoon sell it back for $150 to as high as 2000 at peak peak times.
These people have figured out long term storage as in months not hours. Also shipping container sized batteries cheap too. They are metal oxide and water based. Not as energy dense as LFP but when you can stack shipping container sized batteries boxes cheap wins.
The cost for sodium and aqueous cells are much lower than lithium and no supply chain issues they use common elements like sodium,iron,aluminum,manganese which are all 100% recycleable. Mine once use many.
The key metric is LCOS in $/MWh with super long cycle lives that plunges once it’s under $50 MWh you are now the cheapest form of dispatchable power anywhere that’s combined cycle turbine prices. Nukes are in the $90-175 range, coal is well above $100 now even before the scrubbers needed to not even meet natgas level emissions. Solar during the day hits $15 and wind at night is sometimes negative in Texas so $0 but usually in the $20-30 range. Having sub $50 storage means you buy $15-30 solar and wind when it’s available and sell back at $75 or more during the day you are still cheaper than nukes or coal and on par with combined cycle turbines in the $90 range. Added benefit is individual companies and co-ops can buy power banks and use arbitrage opportunities to save huge amounts of money on power costs. Buy directly from the grid op like ERCOT at night or mid day solar peak cheap then use the on-site packs when the grid prices move upwards due to demand. From the companies side the packs handle the peaks and valleys of their demands while only buying when the price is low. Add-on on-site panels or turbines if in a windy it sunny place for even cheaper power. Panels can do $10 MWh on site it’s the ups downs and night that matters. Having a megawatt sized batteries on-site means that doesn’t matter anymore.