We're also pretty far away from the kinds of renewable penetration where you actually need a lot of storage, so we have plenty of time left to build more batteries and electrolyzers.
Electrolysis is extremely inefficient. It's unlikely to be a practical means of grid scale energy storage any time soon.
80 per cent is what you call extremely inefficient ... what percentage would be "efficient" then in your opinion?
> Accounting for the accepted use of the higher heat value (because inefficiency via heat can be redirected back into the system to create the steam required by the catalyst), average working efficiencies for PEM electrolysis are around 80% ... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Industri...]
Why should any exist yet, when natural gas has been so cheap? Tighten the screws enough to eliminate fossil fuel dispatchable sources and you'll start to see it (or something else that can solve the same problem better).
Many places are already seeing energy surpluses. California and Hawaii are consistently reaching excess daytime energy production. If we really can store electricity in hydrogen $1/KWh, then we should be seeing hydrogen storage being built to profit off these intervals of negative energy prices. But we aren't. Is it because people fail to see this market opportunity? Or, maybe, it's because writing a white paper clai…
Natural gas is really hard to displace here, and won't happen until it becomes and stays expensive. It may now be above that price level in Europe, but it has to stay there to enable the capital investment in large scale green hydrogen production.
Is it? Are you taking into account battery degradation from 1 cycle every day? The vast majority of battery chemistries won't last more than 3-4 years under those circumstances, and those that would are either much more expensive or experimental. As of now storing 10kWh at 1kW costs around 1000$ from the cells alone. If you're changing them every 3 years then you have to spend 10 000$/kW over 30 years whereas nuclear…
Aren't lifetimes closer to 10+ years due to better battery management (managed operating temperature and charge/discharge)? Tesla suggest such with its megapack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack
Only if you don't do daily ~80% discharges.
You can avoid that right now because the grid has baseload. But if it doesn't you can avoid the wear cycles.
10 years is about what you'd expect if you only discharge ~30% of capacity daily, which is how it is operating right now.
Well, the price for HPC is very expensive. The stupid thing is that by structuring the subsidy in a smarter way the UK could have gotten it at half the price. I've seen no reason why they did it how they did except adherence to some ideological dogma. Or putting my conspiracy glasses on, maybe some politically well-connected bankers in London made off like robbers at the expense of the public at large.
TVO in Finland managed to get similar plant for final price of 5,7 milliard euros. Though it is not yet producing energy. So, UK did somewhat worse in the process.
Yep, by forcing Areva, the supplier of it, into bankruptcy by having the foresight of signing a fixed price deal.
What about building huge solar plants in Western Sahara and Morocco? The Moroccan Government seems pretty friendly and stable. If we then configure all our electric cars to charge during the day, and discharge from 6pm onwards, we can address a lot of the evening peak.
What happens in severe storms?
Then you rely on turbines instead, or turn on your nuclear reactors, or import from neighbours.
French generation is ~70% nuclear (10% wind/solar) and German is ~10% (~40% wind/solar). Yet their prices track each other closely. So I think this explanation is too simplistic. Possibly there are large interconnects between the French and German grids levelling out wholesale prices, but my assumption is that they cannot carry enough power for this imagined scenario where nuclear makes a big difference.
It will go down to 0% in Germany in several months. Germany is shutting down its last six nuclear power plants and no new ones can be built. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium also want to shut down their nuclear power plants. Shameful, unscientific public opinion in Western Europe despite more people realizing the danger of global warming.
Not being able to eat certain mushrooms or animals for decades in whole regions because of radioactive rain does that to a population yeah.
> Yet their prices track each other closely. If by "track each other closely", you mean prices in Germany are reliably 50% higher than those in France[1], then yes, they "track each other" closely. German energy policy has been an unmitigated disaster, creating by far the most expensive electricity prices in the OECD and of course the highest in Europe, whereas prices in France are below the EU average. https://ec.eu…
The source refers to retail electricity prices and thus doesn't apply here. The German electricity price is subject to lots of different taxes and fees; energy generation makes up less than a quarter of it [1]. These taxes do not need to exist and even the "EEG" which subsidizes renewables could be paid via the general budget. Like, for example, power plants could be paid for by the state. The comparison of household…
So according to your logic, taxes used to subsidize electricity production should not be included when calculating the cost of electricity, which can only give rise to a meaningless cost. Germany imposes such high taxes because they have such massive subsidies for producers. That is why electricity costs so much more in Germany — because it costs so much more to produce. But being fungible, the cost of wholesale electricity on the transnational exchanges will of course tend to the law of one price. It is the taxes that bring this in line with reality as to the fully loaded cost of generation, which in Germany is much higher.
French generation is ~70% nuclear (10% wind/solar) and German is ~10% (~40% wind/solar). Yet their prices track each other closely. So I think this explanation is too simplistic. Possibly there are large interconnects between the French and German grids levelling out wholesale prices, but my assumption is that they cannot carry enough power for this imagined scenario where nuclear makes a big difference.
France is supplying electricity to all of its neighbors and they’re trading in the same market. Thus, if electricity is scarse and expensive across Europe, French wholesale prices rise as well. FWIW, the French government forces EDF to sell the electricity to its national competitors at a fixed price of around 50 Euro/MWh, IIRC.
What everyone seems to be missing here is that in France alot of heating during winter is done with electricity which is not the case in germany.
So peak electricity usage in France during Winter is much higher and that is the time where it needs to import alot.
French generation is ~70% nuclear (10% wind/solar) and German is ~10% (~40% wind/solar). Yet their prices track each other closely. So I think this explanation is too simplistic. Possibly there are large interconnects between the French and German grids levelling out wholesale prices, but my assumption is that they cannot carry enough power for this imagined scenario where nuclear makes a big difference.
It will go down to 0% in Germany in several months. Germany is shutting down its last six nuclear power plants and no new ones can be built. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium also want to shut down their nuclear power plants. Shameful, unscientific public opinion in Western Europe despite more people realizing the danger of global warming.