Countries and companies are now preparing and forming international coalitions to position themselves for the green hydrogen future.

  • TigrisMorte
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    88 months ago

    No it won’t. Too expensive to store and too expensive to transport.

    • Iceblade
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      48 months ago

      I wouldn’t be so sure.

      It’s both easier and cheaper to store at large scale than electricity, as well as there being indicators that fossil gas infrastructure can be converted for usage with H2.

      • HypxOPM
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        98 months ago

        Advancement in technology and economies of scale will ensure it will be very cheap in the long-run. People who doubt this are just repeating the same arguments used against renewable energy in general. We were told many times that it was “impossible” for wind and solar to be cost effective, until they did.

        • Iceblade
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          38 months ago

          Same thing could be said for Hydrogen tech?

          I think the key advantages with hydrogen is cheaper construction of large storage, ease of long-distance transportation and long-term storage.

          Thing is that current battery tech is fundamentally incompatible with large scale application. It’s been challenging to use it effectively even on the scale of vehicles - and gridscale is magnitudes larger. From the numbers I’ve seen (correct me if there’s newer data) it isn’t even competitive with pumped hydro.

          Btw, the problem with variable renewables isn’t the cost-effectiveness in electricity generation, it’s their inability to guarantee a stable energy supply on their own without incurring huge overhead costs (a problem that still hasn’t been solved).

          • HypxOPM
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            78 months ago

            Making renewable energy reliable will require hydrogen as an energy storage mechanism. Except for a few special cases, 100% renewable grids are impossible without it.

            • TheChurn
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              38 months ago

              There are many chemosynthetic pathways to smooth intermittent supply from renewable energy sources. Electrolysis is only one of them.

              It certainly isn’t “impossible” without hydrogen.

              • HypxOPM
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                8 months ago

                They all basically require hydrogen. E-fuels or green ammonia all require water electrolysis. Attempts at alternatives inevitable up trying to make crazy ideas work, like burning sodium or boron or whatever. Those ideas are pretty much all nonstarters.

            • Iceblade
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              28 months ago

              Definitely agree, at least if seeking a cost-effective solution.

              I expect an optimized clean electricity system would see renewables built to a ratio of hydro availability (35-50% of renewable production being hydro, depending on longitude, climate and storage investments), and the rest being some mix of nuclear, biomass & situational options (such as geothermal or regional interconnects).

      • TigrisMorte
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        08 months ago

        It has to be frozen to quite low temp.s to make storage possible and it leaks out of virtually anything.

            • HypxOPM
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              78 months ago

              There isn’t enough pump hydropower for all energy storage needs. And it is very geographically limited too.

            • Iceblade
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              28 months ago

              Oh for sure. Only problem is that pumped hydro is already matured. We won’t see any real future cost savings there, and it’s too expensive to be practical for mass adoption. We need something cheaper, which hydrogen might be.

              My link was just to highlight that H2 doesn’t need to be frozen for grid-scale storage, and leakage is less of an issue there.

              • TigrisMorte
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                18 months ago

                Hydrogen is simply too expensive to store for any real mass power use. H2 is nothing more than the latest fantasy of folks trying to find a reason to avoid investing in solar.

                • HypxOPM
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                  78 months ago

                  Green hydrogen is made via electrolysis using renewable energy. You’re simply repeating the same language of the oil and gas industry by suggest new green technologies are just fantasies.

                • Iceblade
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                  28 months ago

                  Grid-scale energy storage is a requirement to reduce volatility in any system with a large reliance on VRE.

                  • TigrisMorte
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                    18 months ago

                    And hydrogen is one of the more expensive, complex, and high maintenance ways ways to accomplish that.

      • HypxOPM
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        98 months ago

        Hydrogen is multiple orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries at store energy for long durations.

        • @cosmicrookie
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          28 months ago

          This is what i’m trying to convey too