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I get that this isn’t cost competitive on the energy side alone with a barrel of oil, but what about energy PLUS storage cost competitive to solar/wind?

Feels like if we didn’t have to invent new batteries but instead just turned excess solar and wind into carbon neutral gas “batteries” that would be a win.

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Yes, storage is hugely expensive.

A barrel of oil is about 1,700 kWh. If we have an optimistic cost (https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2022/utility-scale_battery_...) of $300 per kWH capacity that is $510,000. Divide by say 5000 cycles that you can get out of a battery: it costs $102 in what is capital depreciation/wear to store one barrel of oil.

Of course projections show that reducing to 1/3 of that...eventually.

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