Hydrogen Energy Storage

You don't have to transport it very far if you generate it onsite straight in the hydrogen powerplant that'll turn it back into electricity with between 40 to 60% efficiencyIf we follow your 3rd paragraph and turn the hydrogen into hydrocarbons, not only do you lose efficiency in that process, you make CO2 as a byproduct of combustion againNobody is interested in storage that turns your carbon-free green energy back into greenhousing energyThe reason you might want hydrogen in

It's not that hard to store solar power as Hydrogen and turn that back into electricity. The end-to-end efficiency is not as good as for batteries, but building something that can hold Hydrogen for a few months is cheaper than building the equivalent amount of batteries.

Electrolysis is decently efficient (>70%), but turning the Hydrogen back to electricity loses quite a bit. Nevertheless, the real question is cost, not efficiency. As you noted during peak production the electricity is essentially free. If it's cheaper to use existing NG infrastructure to store Hydrogen and run gas turbines with it than building an equivalent amount of batteries, then we should go for it. Given that world lithium battery production is insufficient right now, and differen

The idea is that energy from renewables can be converted to Hydrogen, which acts as a store of energy. It is a better store of energy than batteries, as scaling up batteries to grid scale is next to impossible. Hydrogen, however, can take advantage of existing gas and oil infrastructure.And once a critical mass is reached, along with electrification of transportation, we can drastically reduce oil usage.

Hydrogen may be cheaper as energy storage for meeting peak load on a mostly-renewable electrical grid. In the short term (20 years) the loss of thermodynamic efficiency isn't much compared to the ability to re-use existing steam turbines from natural gas plants. Water and carbon fiber is much more widely available than the precursors to batteries and so the working medium is more accessible world-wide.If there's a place for hydrogen in the electrical grid then there will be cheap

No. :-)Yeah, I know, not helpful. Hydrogen storage continues to be a huge issue. It is just so much more efficient to manufacture long chain molecules with hydrogen that you can then drive around in tanker trucks, store underground for pumping into units which burn them to recover the energy.Once there is enough excess energy I expect you will see Fischer-Tropsch[1] type refineries that convert hydrogen and CO2 into liquid fuel rather than trying to ship around the hydrogen.[1] <a href=

This is very much an area of active research. See: https://soundcloud.com/energylive/podcast-energy-live-evoene... for a lab in Australia.The main use of hydrogen is longer term storage than you are suggesting. For example, in cold climates generating energy from solar in summer and using it for heating in winter.The other way it could be useful is f

Actually, storage and transportation are positives for hydrogen. It's easier to transport and store hydrogen than it is to transport and store electricity. Hydrogen can be stored underground in caverns very cheaply (this is a demonstrated technology already in use for buffering hydrogen produced from fossil fuels), compared to the cost of equipment for storing electrical energy. Hydrogen is a viable for seasonal storage of renewable energy, unlike batteries.The negative for hydrogen

The options are not {hydrogen, waste}, they are {batteries, thermal storage, pumped hydroelectric, Sabatier process methane[0], …, hydrogen, waste}.[0] I’m not a civil engineer and I can’t estimate the costs of upgrading existing methane pipes to cope with hydrogen, but people write about it being a thing, so this may or may not be better than pure hydrogen even if it’s less energy efficient; but the point is there are many options not just two

Isn't cheaper turn the electricity into liquid hydrogen?!Hydrogen can be stored for months, delivered by car, tubes, ships, etcDo not have many losses across long distances