this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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It really is though. If you need twice as many solar panels to make the same energy it's a very pertinent problem.
I don't think that's right, since during times of high solar or wind production, more energy is produced than is consumed. This energy will then be used to create hydrogen. This is a very battery like concept which enables the buffering of renewable energy using hydrogen production. Because of this assymmetry we do not need twice the amount of renewable power plants.
You do though. You need to refill the storage faster than it is drained, it's a simple numbers game.
If you waste half the electricity produced going hydrogen over pumped hydro then you need more renewables.
Okay I think I understand, you mean because of the energy lost to the process during hydrogen production, right? This is true, but it's again a question of how can we produce climate neutral energy without employing fossil fuels or nuclear energy, and if that means we have built more renewable power plants, to fill the hydrogen tanks, why not just build them?
Sure, if it was free to build, it would be better than not having them (though worse than more efficient types of storage), assuming the cost of refining the steel breaks even.
There's a reason fossil fuel companies fund hydrogen.
Of course this is more expensive. This is the price for being independent of fossil and nuclear fuel.
Fossil fuel companies support hydrogen plants that use fossil fuel to produce "grey" hydrogen, not green hydrogen produced by renewables.