|
|
|
|
|
|
by pfdietz
1244 days ago
|
|
|
Yes, but the producing and burning is not proportional to the amount of energy stored, but to the rate at which the hydrogen is produced or consumed. In the 100% renewable grid, electricity actually will be in surplus a good part of the time, because so much excess capacity would be installed. This is not the case now, so you can't use the current frequency at which curtailment occurs as some sort of baseline. Yes, you'd need excess storage so it doesn't run out. Fortunately hydrogen storage is cheap. This is another argument for hydrogen over batteries. You can run the numbers and see that in a hypothetical system for providing steady power in Germany, including hydrogen storage can cut the total cost nearly in half (subject to assumptions, of course.) Doing it with just wind, solar, and batteries ends up being far more expensive. |
|
|
The absolute best case for seasonal storage is 1kW * 9 months = 6,480 kWh per 1kW of equipment if you are willing to pay unlimited prices per kWh.
However if you are depending on 0$/kWh which hypothetically occurs 1% of the time you are down to 55kWh per 1kW of equipment. In a world with mass storage wholesale prices will spend less time at 0$ so what matters is the prices when you’re operating not historic prices before you build these facilities.
PS: Conversely, if you’re using that stored energy the grid isn’t going to have a deficit 24/7 the entire winter at your maximum production rate. If you average 8 hours a day for 2 months that’s 480 hours of operation per year. Gas turbines are cheap but not that cheap.