[ncmncm]

You build out a few days or weeks of storage, and also transmission lines. Where it looks like your storage is going to run dry, you order a shipment of ammonia to burn, synthesized at any solar farm in the tropics, or a wind farm anywhere.

The appealing quality of synthetic fuel like ammonia is that there is always an eager market for as much as you can produce, so once your local tankage is full, excess power produces reliable revenue. Your synthesizers are idle only when you are drawing down banked energy, and not necessarily even then if you have plenty.

[foxyv]

Synthetic fuels produced from atmospheric carbon and cheap solar energy make sense. I'm cautiously optimistic about Prometheus Fuels.

https://prometheusfuels.com/

[ncmncm]

Synthetic hydrocarbons will always cost more than synthetic ammonia and synthetic hydrogen. Of the two, ammonia is more practical to transport.

Synthetic hydrocarbons will be used for a long time where those others can't be made to work, such as old cars and chainsaws, and air transport until LH2 fleets and infrastructure are built out; or are used too rarely to merit upgrading, like back-up generators.

[foxyv]

I guess we'll see which ones pan out. I'm hoping for both as long as we stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere. Although I'm not so sure about the cost. Prometheus is looking at pretty inexpensive prices per gallon.

[ncmncm]

They are only one of many. Each has an angle.

It is hard to know which are like Energy Vault, just there to scam investors, and which are onto something. I bet Terraform Industries is, at least, on the level. Whether they have the sauce to compete is a whole other question, but it will be a seller's market for a long time. That means whoever does it cheapest gets most profit.

Probably whoever manufactures equipment cheapest wins, even if their thing is not the cheapest/most efficient to use.