this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, this feels like a good place for Hydrogen power to step in.
One of the oft repeated concerns is that generating hydrogen to power vehicles the takes a lot of energy, which often comes from dirty sources.
One of the oft repeated issues for solar (or wind etc) is that it's available at certain times and not in and of itself storable or transportable, so excess is lost.
So, take the excess solar energy, produce hydrogen and store for off-peak times or to distribute.
Seems like a win to me.
And this involves only driving in summer when there is excess energy? Or getting through winter by storing enough hydrogen to make the Beirut explosion look like a firecracker in comparison?
That's funny, but modern solar panel power plants don't care that it's winter. The panels rotate and an arid area isn't getting that much more cloud cover.
The article says the ones it talks about do. Also, rotating panels can't stop days from being shorter during winter.
I'm not saying it's not lower. I'm saying it's not nearly as big of a deal as people say it is.
So what are you saying exactly? With what issue would using hydrogen help?
Night? Longer periods of cloudy days or storms?
So we are not using it for cars, but to make electricity at night? Just even less efficiently than hydro pumped power? Ok...
Hydroelectric is great where it is available, but it's again limited by landscape and other factors in use
I'm just talking about winter vs summer capacity in desert solar installations.
Just ship the hydrogen to the other hemisphere.
That sounds fun. Not only are we already losing ton of energy to create the hydrogen, we can now lose even more and make it more expensive by trying to liquefy/compress it to make it somewhat transportable. [1]
Also, almost 90% of humans living in the northen hemisphere will surely not cause any issues to this plan. [2]
Just ship the humans to the other hemisphere.
🤣
You're not LOSING anything if it's capturing already excess energy, which would by its nature be lost if not used at the time of generation
Neither solar panels, nor hydrogen generators are free. If you need to build extra panels and hydrogen generators, you are making the infrastructure more expensive, consequently raising electricity prices. Or hydrogen prices if you use it as fuel instead of power storage.
Storing hydrogen is difficult and expensive. Not even to say it can't be done, but it would require the energy companies to invest money in capital, and they hate doing that.