Or, just use the solar electricity as-is.
I understand the energy storage aspect here but it comes at a high cost.
One battery breakthrough will obsolete this entire process. Lots of time and money is being devoted to new battery technology --- very little to this.
This effectively looks like a long shot effort to salvage the internal combustion engine.
Certainly, in year 2060 when it's too late.
I can't help thinking that peolle who believe in Rapture have a similar thought process - if you are holding out for a miracle, it doesn't make sence to put in effort now
So when will this hydrogen thingy will be ready and economically viable?
Don't look now but you might have just as big (if not bigger) case of religion.
Isn't this sorta how the "free market" works? People/corporations invest money based on their judgement of viability, effectiveness, etc..
Right now, the majority of the collective mind trust is betting on new battery technology. But feel free to convince them otherwise.
Batteries are short term storage; hydrogen is long term. They complement each other.
Mystery batteries that are cheaper than todays batteries do not exist even in a lab
In other words, it is not economically viable for anything beyond niche applications.
Hydrogen is not a fuel. It readily reacts and forms strong chemical bonds with *everything*. It can be manufactured but not without the overall process being energy negative --- a net consumer of energy. Not many applications can realistically absorb this cost.
The implication you are trying to make there, that hydrogen is useless because its manufacture does not violate conservation of energy, is ridiculous.
Maybe this is the battery breakthrough.
Further gas storage of energy is cheaper than battery storage (with a fixed cost for actually burning the stuff) Are batteries ever going to get to the point of being viable for storing a week's worth of energy? A month's worth?
In a lot of the world that's what you'll need to do. Solar isn't going to cover that European January where there's no wind.
I can see why I sounded in favour of methane over batteries but I was just acknowledging the OP's point about dollers/joule stored. Batteries have plenty of other advantages that I think put them ahead despite that figure.
Not for rare outage backup or seasonal storage. Batteries would have to improve by two orders of magnitude in cost to achieve that.