[foxyv]

The problem with hydrogen is the storage. Although electrolysis and other methods of generating hydrogen are fairly efficient, the cost to compress it is obscene. Sabatier production of Methane is comparable, however we already have infrastructure to use Methane and storage is a solved problem.

Methanol production requires methane as a synthesis gas so it just adds another step. Plant based methanol has all the same problems as ethanol. Until we are running electrified tractors and equipment we will probably be carbon positive when producing methanol. There are a few processes which are using waste from coal and concrete plants, but they are unlikely to scale enough to make Methane unnecessary.

Currently the best way to store surplus electricity are batteries and pumped hydro.

[hannob]

> Methanol production requires methane as a synthesis gas so it just adds another step.

That's not true. Methanol can be made directly from CO2 and H2. This has been tried more than a decade ago: https://www.carbonrecycling.is/ They just opened a much larger plant with this technology in China.

There's currently a huge push in the shipping industry towards renewable methanol, and there are a bunch of companies investing in this space.

[foxyv]

E-Methanol is okay as a carbon neutral fuel and solvent. At 50-60% efficiency it makes an excellent fuel to create from electricity. But it is still a long way from competing with battery and pumped hydro. It's fuel cell efficiency is only 30% with current technology after the 40-50% losses from the creating of the fuel itself. You can buy a lot of transmission wire at that price point.

All of these technologies illustrate how obscenely difficult it will be to put the carbon genie back in the bottle and what a miracle lithium chemistry batteries really are.

[rich_sasha]

But I guess you can make a lot of methanol in summer and burn it in winter, storing it cheaply for months. Batteries so far seem maybe ok at balancing diurnal power generation / use patterns but not seasonal storage.

[foxyv]

Yeah, it is definitely not a bad idea for heating fuel, feed chemical, racing fuel, jet fuel, etc... Just replacing the natural gas produced methanol would be nice. However, wind energy has high availability in the winter and batteries would make up for blizzards and shortfalls. Canada is having a lot of good results from wind energy. In addition, they make a ton of energy from hydroelectricity.

Every country is different, E-methanol may be a solution for a few places. However it is not something I would personally invest in.

[rich_sasha]

> However, wind energy has high availability in the winter and batteries would make up for blizzards and shortfalls.

North European winters are dark, cloudy and often windless, not for 6 hours but for days at a time.

[pfdietz]

For static applications, hydrogen can be easily stored underground. Energy is used to compress it, but that energy can be recovered by running it through an expander (and if the compression/expansion is done in stages to approximate isothermal compression, the round trip efficiency of this can be high.)

[foxyv]

That's really neat! I've mostly seen explanations about Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel so I've never stumbled on cavern storage. It makes sense to use isothermal compression. Especially if you can recover the energy from decompressing the hydrogen using a turbo expander which would be obscenely difficult on a vehicle.

[_hypx]

Why would it be difficult in a car? It is the same principle as a compressed air car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed-air_car

[foxyv]

A turboexpander in a car would add an obscene amount of cost to an already expensive fuel cell vehicle. Also, it would be a fire and explosion hazard requiring a ton of maintenance.

[_hypx]

That sounds completely unsubstantiated. Nothing involved here is that complicated or expensive. In fact, the whole thing should cost less than a comparable BEV given how little raw material you need. And if properly designed, it should be perfectly safe.

[Gibbon1]

I think at this point it's just batteries. You can just quietly[1] site them on random brownfield land and be done with it.

[1] Quietly pull the permits, drop the batteries, and connect to the grid without alerting the Sierra Club or the usual obstructionists.

[foxyv]

Pumped Hydro is a nice stopgap to help storage keep up with wind and solar. Batteries are still only a small percentage of our production numbers. We are still only just about 6GW which is about 0.2% of average totals. Current projections are showing about 860GW by 2030 which is about 25% of current average production. However production will need to increase significantly to offset current fossil fuel emissions.

We are reaching the point where solar and wind are so insanely cheap that it's raining soup. Everyone is scrambling to find a bigger bucket.