Oz and hydrogen

who am i to tell another country what to do?

 

the whole world is going crazy, must be climate change

 

If you got the excess renewables, it isn't a bad way of storing grid energy. It is just cheaper to use batteries at this time.

 

This is a mini R&D project. Audi has already shown it is effective in Germany, and we have similar projects in the US. It is really small. Consider this. The california government is spending about $50M US/year on hydrogen on top of what the US federal government spends. This is a one time A$15M project that is a proof of concept. South australia already has bought a big battery from tesla that cost 6x more is already paying off. Its not bad doing this R&D.

South Australia's Tesla battery on track to make back a third of cost in a year | Technology | The Guardian

The bottom of the article you posted had the scheme in it.

That is a scheme to greenwash japanese fuel cell cars by leaving the pollution in Australia and hiding the costs outside of Japan.

 

The research for renewable energy surplus storage is good to do because future supplies of batteries may not meet demand. This can also displace some fossil natural gas used for heating, hot water, and cooking. That flexibility could prove useful for some localities.

 

The finances/economic could be rather complicated on this. Don't see a problem working on pilot projects and think there is more potential here than at first meets the eye.

Batteries can be great for storing several hours worth of renewable energy. Right now they are great for peak shaving and buffering.

But what happens during a pleasantly warm month where the sun is shining bright, the wind is blowing nicely, hydro power is trickling through, and batteries remain filled to capacity weeks before? Demand is low and it's just too nice out to run AC or heat all month.

An electrolyzer could run when there is excess renewable power that would otherwise never make it into a battery.

 

Bob its about cost not efficiency when it comes to renewables. I have no idea how to even guess what the efficiency of a turbine or solar panel is all about.

If wind (or in the unlikely case solar) is curtailed then it is simply wasted. The problem is making the excess energy useful at a cheap enough cost that it removes fossil fuel. That way excess peak renewables can be built more economically. Again A$15M test is tiny compared to the grid costs. The idea is make the excess energy displace fossil as cheaply as possible, then building excess wind during peaks makes more sense, and it can fill in more of the grid utilization. I don't know how much curtailment happens in Australia now, but in china its 10%. If you can take that 10% and electrolyze and pump it into natural gas pipelines at 65% efficiency then only 3.5% of the wind would be wasted.

Batteries work great to buffer power, not energy. For energy they are still too expensive for most grids. A combination of electrolysis (perhaps right at a ccgt plant) and batteries might make adding renewables less expensive as they take a higher proportion of the grid.

 

Gravity energy storage locations are location limited. Placing a turbine at the bottom of a mine shaft likely has its own increased costs.

With a handy CO2 source going from making hydrogen to methane isn't a huge leap. From there, diesel, methanol, and even gasoline become potential products. We won't be able to replace every ICE out there with a plug and battery in a reasonable time frame.

 

don't know how they could have Surplus Renewables with the frequent intermittent blackouts & brown outs that they have. Isn't that why Tesla has been successful there, installing massive battery backups? So that it could stabilize their grid?
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A black or brown out's cause might have nothing to do with the electric generation source. Hundreds of wind turbines don't help you if suicidal squirrels keep shorting the sole transmission line from them.

Batteries work for energy storage, but if this and plug in cars catch on and grow quickly globally, material shortages can easily become an issue. Diversifying doesn't hurt, and this is a small scale test.

 

With Australia's tepid to visceral response to electric cars, it's going to be a long time before they become accepted there, much less mainstream. So I guess the good thing is we have a long long time to start worrying about it.

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