If you should wait for a hydrogen car instead of a battery one is indeed questionable. I also think that storing hydrogen will always be difficult. But as a fuel cell it might have its uses.
This isn't about either/or. Far more cultish is the idea that says otherwise.
Is it though? The round-trip efficiency of batteries is 70-95%, for flywheels it's 90%, for hydrogen it's under 50, and all the usual problems of hydrogen (danger, absolute pain in the ass to store, embrittlement) remain.
In practice, the price of electricity swings roughly 300% during a given day in California. At 12pm, there's so much solar power that most people's panels are turning off and electricity is damn near free.
At 7pm, there's so little energy on the grids (and the Peaker plants are having such a hard time keeping up with the "duck curve"), that the price of electricity skyrockets.
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Unless you plan to have your electric car charge at exactly 12pm every single day to take advantage of that excess solar energy (while also negotiating to participate in the raw electric energy market), all of that free solar energy is basically worthless to you.
In contrast, something like Hydrogen storage can "store" electricity by just creating more hydrogen.
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Perhaps you think that void can be filled by Li-ion batteries. But that comes down to a Li-ion vs Electrolysis question, and its almost undeniable that concrete-and-steel for storage is cheaper to build out than buying Lithium-ion / Cobalt / SiC MOSFETs / etc. etc.
What we want are machines that can suddenly grab all the free electricity off the grids at 12pm, and then they turn off by 7pm (for the duck curve), and then maybe turn on again at night (depending on the price of electricity). A "reverse peaker plant" if you will, that only uses electricity when the prices of electricity are cheap.
Hydrogen works for that. Li-ion is too expensive for this still.
Because there are competing storage solutions and the question is if hydrogen is actually "sensible here?
If you're wasting half your storage in round-trip costs, you're losing half your money during peak hours.
> In contrast, something like Hydrogen storage can "store" electricity by just creating more hydrogen.
In the same way something like a flywheel can "store" electricity by just spinning faster.
> Perhaps you think that void can be filled by Li-ion batteries.
I'm mostly pointing out that hydrogen is (currently at least) a very inefficient method of storage, on top of being an actively dangerous and problematic one.
> its almost undeniable that concrete-and-steel for storage is cheaper to build out than buying Lithium-ion / Cobalt / SiC MOSFETs / etc. etc.
it really is not though, you're not storing hydrogen (especially not safely) safely in a tub.
> Hydrogen works for that.
So you state, with no evidence to back it up.
So build the competing storage solution.
Except you can't. Because we all know that Li-ion is a dirty mineral to mine and extract, and that worldwide production of it is incredibly limited. And you know it.
So to meet our needs of expanding energy storage, the use of steel and concrete to store hydrogen is more scalable and cheaper to build out.
> I'm mostly pointing out that hydrogen is (currently at least) a very inefficient method of storage, on top of being an actively dangerous and problematic one.
And I'm pointing out that Li-ion is effectively impossible with our current means of production. So there's no point arguing for it as its being deployed as quickly as humanly possible.
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Li-ion is growing too slowly as an industry. Its not going to work, and expansion is going to be incredibly dirty. The critical components of Li-ion are quite dirty (Cobalt, Li-ion, etc. etc.), especially compared to steel and concrete.
This isn’t to say lithium is the last word in storage (I’d be surprised and disappointed if it was), but I don’t think you should be claiming it can’t solve our problems.
My personal preference is an antipodal power grid, which works out much cheaper if considered in isolation, but: (1) even with the political will that will take an annoyingly long to mine the resources for, and (2) mobile storage needs outweigh static needs by so much that (in the long term) a power grid can be stabilised by the batteries the car industry is waiting to recycle into new batteries.
If this is true, they sure have strange billing practices… I have solar panels and batteries and live in Southern California… I am billed by time of use, and noon is in “high peak”, where I pay the most for electricity. I have my system set up to use battery power at noon and send all my electricity to the grid because of this.
I use CAISO and OASIS, because its publicly available data. Furthermore, I focus on the AFPR_1__TOT_GEN-APND node (wherever it is), because its #1 on the list and therefore easiest to lookup. (I'm assuming the nodes are in alphabetical order)
http://oasis.caiso.com/mrioasis/logon.do
California is a focus because their website is easier to use. I don't live anywhere near there, so I can't say much about practical knowledge of the region. Still though, having this data open and free means I can use it as an easy point of discussion.
For that node, I can absolutely say that in the Summer Months (Say July 13th), HE09 (9am) was $51 and 12noon was $57... while HE20 (8pm) was $320. An increase of 600%. HE19 and HE21 are still $170, showing that 300% swings day-to-day are quite common and typical.
The 300% swings of LMP / locational marginal price is quite common on this node in the summer, even after we remove the extremity of HE20 (600% swing for one hour).
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A hypothetical energy solution that's 50% efficient is still worthwhile in the face of 300% price swings. In fact, a 300% price swing means that even 33% efficiency solutions are economically feasible.
People are underestimating the price swings of the energy market here whenever they talk about energy efficiency. We don't actually need much efficiency, we just need any storage, even the crappiest of storage, and we'll benefit. And we need a _LOT_ of that said storage.
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I realize that my methodology probably is full of holes. But that's where I came up with the 300% claim. Feel free to come up with a better methodology and/or improvements (I think if you told me which nodes are most representative, it'd be a big help for example).
.. but the capex of your electrolysis plant isn't, and a giant pile of platinum electrodes that only get used once a day isn't a great deal.
Fundamentally batteries and electrolysis are the same category of reaction - electrically driven redox. So you have three options:
- ions plate out as a solid on one of the electrodes ("battery"), or possibly a hot liquid (aluminium, molten salt batteries)
- change the ionization state of some liquid (flow batteries, e.g. vanadium chemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery )
- ions come off as a gas (hydrogen, but also e.g. chlorine if you electrolize salt water)
From there you have all sorts of detailed issues like "does this destroy the electrodes" and "is this annoying and/or dangerous to handle". I do wonder if someone should do a John D Clarke and just try all the most common ionic liquids.
Or we can build a bunch of different options and then see what works out 10 years from now?
Like, we all know that Li-ion electrolyte is incredibly flammable, and that electricity serves as an incredibly good and efficient spark source. But we're building them out anyway to see how it works out in practice.
https://www.technowize.com/fire-at-tesla-battery-site-in-aus...
Well, for one way or the other, it looks like we've accepted the fire risk. So "X might catch on fire" isn't exactly a strong argument to me anymore.
(A hybrid usage! A battery and an electrolyser? Of course most batteries with a water chemistry evolve some H2. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210223-the-battery-inve... )
I'd like to see the "we tried all the top 100 easiest positive ions with all the easiest 100 negative ions and here's how they work as battery chemistries."
I think redox flow is probably my favorite chemistry btw, and I'd like to see more redox flow experiments / test deployments.
Gravity storage is my next favorite.
Hydrogen doesn't even make top 3 for me as far as techs, but I'm open to it and have heard the arguments for it. I'm largely convinced H2 is a good idea that could work.
Maybe there needs to be a shift of paradigm for the electrical grid?
From: we need to use this renewable electricity when there's a huge surplus to generate hydrogen/methanol/... to store the energy for periods without sun & wind
Towards: we just power the electrolyzers at full capacity full time (generating surpluses of chemically stored energy that is available long-term for longer periods without sun & wind). Even if it means, that in periods without sun & wind (when electricity demand and price is already high) more gas plants need to be turned on. Seems counterintuitive, yes ... but if the economic benefit of running the electrolyzers with a profit exceeds the economic downside of spending more on CO2 equivalent certificates ... it might be reasonable.
Sure.
Absolutely no way you'll be paying for electrolysed hydrogen though, it's all cracked fossil fuels.
It can't though, not without significant studies and possibly rebuilding them entirely: the temperatures and / or pressures involved are different orders of magnitude, and nat gas does not embrittle.
Industries have started trying to blend hydrogen and natural gas to transport the hydrogen, and even that's turning out to be rather risky[0] unless the line was designed specifically with that use in mind.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245232161...
Is it? I'm not aware of any such installations, this sounds pretty cool.
I don't want advertise hydrogen, but it is the most simple form of potential energy in our atmosphere and I have the impression that fans of the accumulator feel threatened somehow. Sure, investments in hydrogen technology should not negatively affect research in batteries. But since they already have real economical applications, I don't see any issue here. There are numerous interests that would want more powerful batteries.
Superconducting loops are definitely not the storage technology that will economically scale far enough to store weeks worth of energy usage of the attached electrical grid.
But weeks worth of storage (of energy, not necessarily electricity) is exactly what is needed to enable a stable grid based upon 100 % renewable electricity generation.
The simple evidence that leads me to this conclusion is: battery powered electric trucks ... as far as I know these are highly unlikely to become relevant (as in getting a significant market share of all trucks). Methanol fuel cell powered trucks (and not only trucks, but also ships and airplanes) appear to be a very relevant field of interest for companies at the moment.
As soon as methanol fuel cell powered vehicles become economically viable, battery powered electric vehicles will have a hard time competing with them except for specific niches.
Yes. Which is why synthesis of liquid fuels from renewable electricity might become the better alternative to hydrogen. Methanol as an example ... eMeOH ...
Economics & carbon dioxide avoidance cost of methanol production based on renewable hydrogen and recycled carbon dioxide – power-to-methanol https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/se/c8se0...