[pfdietz]

China is selling electrolyzers for < $300/kw. Given that renewable electricity's LCOE is a fraction of nuclear, I don't see how hydrogen could be 10-20 times the cost of nuclear. Were they doing something ridiculous like assuming it's stored as liquid hydrogen?

Also, remember the big use of hydrogen on the grid would be as a dispatchable backstop to cheap renewable sources, not as something that's used 24/7. So most of the energy flow would not be through hydrogen, it would be from the renewables directly (or through batteries for short term smoothing.)

[belorn]

There is a massive war and shortage of natural gas in Europe so if there exist cheap electrolyzers + wind power combinations that can solve that issue today then people should rush to invest before next winter where prices are predicted to sky rock. I recall that the study did say that existing natural gas power plants could cheaply and easily be converted to run on hydrogen. Hydrogen prices has also gone up a lot since the war.

And it was 10-20 times a few years ago. Prices has gone down a significant bit. If you get the prices to around $1 per/kg (about 3-10x reduction from this year prices), and we don't account for transportation, infrastructure and physical storage, the price would start to look really competitive to nuclear.

If you search online you will find plenty of predictions that prices might reach that magical $1 per/kg in say 2030 or so, in which case that will be a great choice. As a bonus it will make medical oxygen dirt cheap. At that point all discussions about nuclear power will mostly be made moot since hydrogen will be the factual best choice.

[freemint]

Hydrogen needs an complete overhaul to the pipeline system. Burning natural gas for energy is a fraction of it's use. More important are heating (where it can't be transported too), steel making and chemistry (CoViD vaccine ingredients are made using natural gas by BASF).

[pfdietz]

Not to supply grid leveling it doesn't. For that, the hydrogen is produced, stored, and consumed in a small range of places.

[ncmncm]

Hydrogen can be added to dilute NG, during the transition.

[k8wk1]

This would still cause hydrogen embrittlement which results in cracked steel pipes.

[ncmncm]

Have you heard of "lamp gas"? It used to be delivered via cast-iron pipes to every house, factory, and street light. It was a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. There was no problem with embrittlement, because the pressure was low. Natural gas is today carried (in the same pipes, some places) at quite low pressure. Germany could start admixing H2 anytime, although feeding it to NG turbines would be a better immediate use.

Anyway aluminum is quite resistant to hydrogen embrittlement.

[trashtester]

This study from MIT found that the LCOE of fully renewable energy production, backed by LI batteries would be $3000/MWh vs $2400/MWh for hydrogen instead of batteries for storage:

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/08/20210829-mitei.html

Either alternative is about 15x to 50x more expensive than Nuclear, though....

[pfdietz]

That's grossly excessive. This website lets you look at optimization vs. actual historical weather data and reaches a much lower cost. BTW, you use both batteries AND storage; their combination can be cheaper than either alone. You also store the hydrogen underground rather than above ground.

https://model.energy/

[trashtester]

I agree that a combination of batteries and hydrogen would be a bit cheaper, but generally I would trust the MIT study over the model above, that states directly that it is a toy model.

It's fun to play with, though, so definitely upvoted.

Do you have an alternative peer reviewed study to support the conclusions?

[pfdietz]

(Edited to actually look at the link)

Looking at that first link, it appears to cost/kWh is the cost for just the seasonal power that is being produced from hydrogen. It is not the average cost/kWh over all the energy being consumed off the grid.

Comparing this to nuclear is to compare apples and oranges. Nuclear supplies baseload, not additional seasonal power. If you tried to use nuclear to supply seasonal power the cost would be extreme. If you use nuclear to supply baseload, it is competing not just with hydrogen but also with much lower cost energy sent directly from renewables to the grid, and from batteries to the grid.

Of course the fraction of the output from the hydrogen fueled turbines will be expensive. But what we get from that toy model is the average cost of power, of which seasonally stored power is just a small part. In that toy model, nuclear is "Dispatchable 2", which you can enable, and which comes out to about 10 euro/kWh (EPR assumptions, perhaps optimistic considering Flamanville 3.)

[trashtester]

About using nuclear to cover seasonal variation, its not ideal, but at worst you increase the cost by 50-100%.

Day/night cycles can make that even slightly worse, but even small amounts of storage can even that out.

This Korean study claims that a at 3% dicount rate, the price the LCOE of their APR1400 reactors go from 36Won/kWh (a bit under 3cents) at 90% average utilization to 52Won/kWh (a bit over 4 cents) at 60% average utilization.

In both cases, the costs are very reasonable.

[trashtester]

> Looking at that first link, it appears to cost/kWh is the cost for just the seasonal power that is being produced from hydrogen.

I interpreted those numbers as average LCOE for the electricy supply, but I could be wrong.

Let's assume that you're right, and this only applies to maybe 25% of total energy needs. The averge price would still be increased by $1000/MWh, on top of the renewable costs themselves, grid costs, etc.

[pfdietz]

If you go to https://model.energy/ and solve for California, 2011 weather data, 2030 cost assumptions, hydrogen is contributing just 5.9 euro/MWh to the average cost of electricity (less than 10% of the total cost of 68.1 euro/MWh). This is for supplying "synthetic baseload", the best case for nuclear (for varying demand, renewables could only do better, since one could always just swap out the nuclear source with this synthetic source, providing an upper bound on the cost.)

Nuclear will do best in more northerly places that are away from coasts. Poland, for example. For extremely northerly places, like Alaska, the total demand is so small that nuclear is not a good fit.

[trashtester]

I alredy provided the link that led to the original paper, here is the original paper, though:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...

[freemint]

I thought the article we are replying to said >>$4000+/MWh for nuclear not including financing.

[trashtester]

No, it is saying that it is currently about $6000000/MW construction cost. Then you devide by number of hours of operations to get the cost per MW/h. (Not adjusted for interest rate.)

The LCOE of new nuclear plants have estimates ranging from less than $30/MWh to around $150/MWh, while estimates for the cost of plants built a few decades ago end up at around $40-60/MWh, from the numbers I've seen.