With batteries, pumped hydro and other energy storage and smart grid solutions able to offer short-term fixes to the intermittent nature of energy supply from solar and wind, could innovations such as renewables-powered green hydrogen and synthetic fuels contribute by balancing longer-term, seasonal fluctuation?
A report by Norwegian consultant DNV GL has considered what contribution seasonal energy storage solutions, such as green hydrogen and synthetic fuels could make to balancing supply in a renewable energy grid.
“As renewables take a larger share of the energy mix, new issues need to be addressed, such as meeting the increasing demand for electricity even when there is no wind or sun,” said DNV GL Energy director Lucy Craig. “Our research shows that seasonal storage provides a possible solution to address the problem of long periods without renewable generation, for example in the northern European winter.”
Promise?
The Promise of Seasonal Storage report analyzed 58 years’ worth of energy and weather data from the Netherlands to identify points at which long-term energy storage could play a role. The results showed a lower-than-expected requirement for long term solutions as the researchers concluded batteries, pumped hydro and emerging technologies such as vehicle-to-grid balancing should be able to do most of the heavy lifting.
Bringing down the costs of compressed hydrogen storage and synthetic fuels to the extent they can offer long-term grid balancing – which has been taken as a given in some quarters – will only happen if other markets for such fuels develop at scale. Even so, carbon taxes may be needed to shore up the grid balancing business case for such solutions, according to the report.
“If the estimated carbon price in 2050 reflects … willingness to pay for carbon-free electricity, using natural gas and accepting [any associated] carbon fine may still be the most viable option,” concluded the report. “A 10% increase of the carbon price will make seasonal storage competitive, provided that it is small enough that it does not affect market prices.”
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Very interesting webinar today by Thierry Lepercq titled the same as his new book, “Hydrogen is the New Oil.” He made very good points on the economics of green H2 (produced from low cost solar and wind energy) and how this will compete directly with natural gas and therefore be more than just seasonal storage.
I think I will pick up that book. I also listen to the :”everything about hydrogen” podcast. I am hoping they will invite Mr. Leperq soon.
Not a chance H2 will be green because it is so inefficient overall.
And seasonal just how will one store it without great losses?
And since Hydro stores too, using it would just waste the money.
I get it, many people can’t wrap their head around change so hydrogen sounds promising as an alternative that keeps the same infrastructure they are used to in place. You have fuel stations, distribution, etc. Sounds viable, but only on the surface. Hydrogen has fundamental issues to overcome, even if the fuel source is green. Generally, compressing hydrogen is dangerous, very dangerous and pumping it is a whole other bag of worms. The average person can’t be trusted to pump their own propane and that is far less dangerous than hydrogen.
People really need to stop being stuck in the current model of going to fill up for fuel. A battery powered vehicle doesn’t take 30 minutes or 3 hours to fuel, depending on the source, it takes 10 seconds, if that. You plug in where you park, you go do your stuff and it fuels while you are not using it. No gas station, no trucks hauling fuel around the area. It saves far more than people give it credit for by eliminating each of those processing in the whole chain of fueling, from the gas station, it’s electricity needs running all day to the fuel needed to move that fuel to the station to the electricity needed to refine that gas in the first place. The fears of an overloaded grid are frankly overblown, yes it does change where we need that electricity but it doesn’t fundamentally change how much electricity we need. Batteries aren’t a perfect solution for cars but they are better than hydrogen.
As far as power storage goes, batteries are a non starter, they simply aren’t built well for that application, however, there are any alternatives that can be put in place that make more sense than Hydrogen. Hydro and geothermal come to mind as two one. Hydro works well where the environment lends itself to it, either pumping or simply storing water behind a dam is the easiest way to save power for later and we have a lot of experience doing it already. Geothermal works as well, you can either pump heat into or take it out of the ground as needed, it works in most areas and when done properly it is a simple, clean energy storage.
Some will argue that nuclear is the solution, the problem with nuclear, is, that until/unless we develop a viable fusion solution, we are trading one limited quantity resource for another. That doesn’t even speak to wasting a valuable resource that can be used for all kinds of applications for medical to long term space exploration and wasting it on boiling water.
DNV GL use an electrolysis price of $610/kW, in 2050.
Nel are building their electrolysers for $420/kW in 2020, in Norway.
The only actual valuable metric is the cost of the electrolyser, because we can find out the electricity cost dependent on the particular region.
Apologies for being cynical, but also there are no financing costs because we have a zero or below-zero interest rate.
Electrolysers elsewhere are also plummetting in cost, and this is widely expected to continue on line with eg solar.
However, it seems DNV GL weren’t told this.