this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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You're ignoring that energy will literally be free for significant parts of the USA as we overdeploy solar panels.
The most expensive part of solar is storage (aka: batteries), and H2 storage is near infinite, as a cheap steel container can contain more-and-more hydrogen (liquefied hydrogen, pressurized hydrogen, etc. etc. Doesn't matter, its just steel and concrete to hold it all).
Between the costs of near-$0 storage and literally free energy as we overproduce, H2 plays a role in being long-term seasonal storage of power. No other "battery" technology has anything close to the chance of storing enough energy for days, weeks, or months like H2 does.
This isn't even theoretical. California's grid is so chock-full of solar panels that there are times where the 1-hour market goes negative, as in the price of electricity drops below $0 (you get paid to use energy). Its already happening, there's not enough storage in practice and solar panels must be overdeployed for them to be anywhere close to effective. There will be questions about how to actually store (and use) all the extra solar panels as we move forward.
H2 plants are one of the best solutions I've heard of for addressing this phenomenon. Store H2 in the summer (where we get excess 15-hour days), and use the H2 later in the winter months when the daylight times drop to 9-hours... depending on latitude of course. But any solar-based grid will have to deal with the fundamental problem of seasonal variations in energy... having far excess (aka: $0 / free) energy in the summer, and not enough in the winter.
H2 naturally smooths out this curve. We can overproduce electricity, send it to H2 plants and store H2 with the excess energy.