Energy Storage Would Play a Major Role in a ‘Green’ Future

[nationalize the fed]

Apr 26, 2015 By Paul Brown, Climate News Network via Truthdig

As the battle to phase out fossil fuels heats up, finding economically viable ways to store surplus electric power is becoming vital.


Storage reservoir for a pumped-water hydroelectricity plant on Zar mountain, southern Poland. Ongrys via Wikimedia Commons

LONDON, 26 April, 2015 ? Inventors are in a race to find the best way of storing electricity to make the most of renewables and cut the use of fossil fuels.

Currently, when more power than needed by consumers is produced by sources such as wind turbines or solar panels, some of the electricity is wasted. But that is changing...snip

...One of the most promising areas – but still expensive – is to use surplus electricity to produce hydrogen. This has the advantage that hydrogen can provide large amounts of power quickly, is easy to transport, and has a variety of applications. It can simply be burned, or can be used to produce a chemical reaction in a fuel cell to produce power without combustion...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/energy_storage_would_play_a_major_role_in_a_green_future_20150426

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/major-changes-are-in-store-for-electricity-industry/



Hydrogen fuel cells are the future of renewable energy storage
By Denis Hayes, Solar Pioneer and founder of Earth Day

...Ultimately, though, this is a bigger issue than which alternative vehicle will prove to be the long-term winner. One way or another, we need to have a way to store very large amount of sunlight for times when the sun isn’t shining. And hydrogen — for fundamental reasons — has to be considered among the most attractive contenders...

http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/opinion/20150423/hydrogen-fuel-cells-are-the-future-of-renewable-energy-storage

[NYC_SKP]

1. True, but it won't be hydrogen except in niche areas. Hydrogen for storage is WAY too inefficient.

Pumped Hydro and Batteries are far, far, more efficient.

Chevron wants you to buy the Hydrogen Economy claptrap.

95% of our hydrogen comes from natural gas.

Solar or Wind or any renewable to hydrogen is terribly inefficient:



https://ecobarons.wordpress.com/hydrogen-blast-the-fuel-of-the-future-and-it-always-will-be/

And for transportation, nothing beats a Battery for storage when it comes to GHG emissions.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Absolutely agree

Except in very specific applications like heavy trucks and such, hydrogen fuel is a utter waste of resources. Worse, it is being pushed by the petroleum industry as a means of continuing to the same destructive process killing us now.

Wind, solar and batteries are the future.

[mackdaddy]

2. Fairly ballance articles at the links. Hydrogen production/storage/re-use possible.

The article at the links I found to be pretty fairly stating the need for area storage facilities for electrical energy.

Along with water pumped to storage ponds, compressed air, various chemical batteries, hydrogen storage should be considered.

Hydrogen needs to be created by splitting water, compressed and stored, and then it needs to be converted back to electricity by reacting it with oxygen in a fuel cell system. This in a lot of processing an support equipment, but it might have a possibility of competing a improvements are made in each of these steps improving electrolysers and fuel cell electrolytes particularly. I think that larger stationary central storage facilitates may have a better chance of economically competing with the other technologies than automobile applications for hydrogen systems. Stationary plants could use higher operating temperature Solid Oxide type fuel cells to turn the stored hydrogen back into electricity such as the Bloom energy Fuel cell units.

Another option would be to store the hydrogen as Anhydrous Ammonia NH3 instead of pure hydrogen gas H2. As a liquid it is much easier to store in conventional lower pressure tanks instead of the thousands of PSI tanks needed for pure hydrogen. More hydrogen atoms can be stored in the same volume tank as liquid ammonia than as pure hydrogen. The Anhydrous ammonia can be used a fuel in standard internal combustion engines, of many fuel cell units, but it is currently also used for many industrial and agricultural uses including being injected into corn fields as fertilizer.

Hydrogen will have a tough economic battle against the other technologies. Water storage in the right location is hard to beat, and compressed air storage is possible too. Great strides are being made in battery technology as will be announced on April 30 by Elon Musk and Tesla for stationary storage units.

What ever technology makes the most economic sense for the application is what should win.

[NYC_SKP]

3. No doubt that storage is the key.

I work in the energy and utility industry.
Storage is key to deploying more renewables all the way out to 100% of our electric power generation mix.
But be careful about that "energy of the future"!

[kristopher]

5. Even rocks are smarter than hydrogen

http://www.isentropic.co.uk

[quadrature]

6. more important... the electric car ...nt