Source: Australia backs hydrogen project to store renewable energy | Reuters The Australian government said on Monday it would provide half the funding for the country’s biggest trial to produce hydrogen using solar and wind energy, which could then be used as a back-up for gas supplies. The A$15 million ($11 million) project is being run by gas pipeline company Jemena, which plans to build a 500 kilowatt electrolyser in western Sydney that will use solar and wind power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen . . . This looks like a scheme to waste their renewable energy in the least efficient way possible. Bob Wilson
In this case, it looks like Murdoch has captured the Oz Federal Government and they are no better than our Orange One. Bob Wilson
If you got the excess renewables, it isn't a bad way of storing grid energy. It is just cheaper to use batteries at this time.
This is a mini R&D project. Audi has already shown it is effective in Germany, and we have similar projects in the US. It is really small. Consider this. The california government is spending about $50M US/year on hydrogen on top of what the US federal government spends. This is a one time A$15M project that is a proof of concept. South australia already has bought a big battery from tesla that cost 6x more is already paying off. Its not bad doing this R&D. South Australia's Tesla battery on track to make back a third of cost in a year | Technology | The Guardian The bottom of the article you posted had the scheme in it. That is a scheme to greenwash japanese fuel cell cars by leaving the pollution in Australia and hiding the costs outside of Japan.
An engineering analysis: Renewable power source 100% Hydrolysis efficiency ~75% to H{2} H{2} to natural gas heater ~81% Total efficiency 75% * 81% ~= 60% Ok, lets somehow feed a fuel cell generator to the grid: Renewable power source 100% Hydrolysis efficiency ~75% to H{2} Storage compression loss ~80% (~20% used for compressors) fuel cell efficiency ~83% inverter efficiency ~95% Total efficiency 75% * 80% * 83% * 95% ~= 47% Now let's do Hornsdale in Australia: Renewable power source 100% Battery storage round trip 80% inverter efficiency ~95% Total efficiency 80% * 95% ~= 76% This is basic engineering and the Australian Federal government is going half-way to the two least efficient systems. It appears the "Liberal" party has very poor engineers. It is called Syngas or Manufactured gas and we used it in the 1800s to make gas for street lights, industry, and home use. Huntsville has an EPA clean-up site where the Boy Scout building once was located. Turns out the residual, toxic chemicals made it unsafe for the Scouts. The Murdoch supported, Australian government for political reasons is trying to make coal king of Australia's economy. But the biggest customers, China and others, are running away from coal as fast as they can. Worse, Oklahoma has shown that fossil fuel companies are tight fisted and don't trickle down their income. Bob Wilson
The research for renewable energy surplus storage is good to do because future supplies of batteries may not meet demand. This can also displace some fossil natural gas used for heating, hot water, and cooking. That flexibility could prove useful for some localities.
The finances/economic could be rather complicated on this. Don't see a problem working on pilot projects and think there is more potential here than at first meets the eye. Batteries can be great for storing several hours worth of renewable energy. Right now they are great for peak shaving and buffering. But what happens during a pleasantly warm month where the sun is shining bright, the wind is blowing nicely, hydro power is trickling through, and batteries remain filled to capacity weeks before? Demand is low and it's just too nice out to run AC or heat all month. An electrolyzer could run when there is excess renewable power that would otherwise never make it into a battery.
Bob its about cost not efficiency when it comes to renewables. I have no idea how to even guess what the efficiency of a turbine or solar panel is all about. If wind (or in the unlikely case solar) is curtailed then it is simply wasted. The problem is making the excess energy useful at a cheap enough cost that it removes fossil fuel. That way excess peak renewables can be built more economically. Again A$15M test is tiny compared to the grid costs. The idea is make the excess energy displace fossil as cheaply as possible, then building excess wind during peaks makes more sense, and it can fill in more of the grid utilization. I don't know how much curtailment happens in Australia now, but in china its 10%. If you can take that 10% and electrolyze and pump it into natural gas pipelines at 65% efficiency then only 3.5% of the wind would be wasted. Batteries work great to buffer power, not energy. For energy they are still too expensive for most grids. A combination of electrolysis (perhaps right at a ccgt plant) and batteries might make adding renewables less expensive as they take a higher proportion of the grid.
This is where gravity based energy storage works. Use the excess to pump water up hill or from a deep mine. There are flow batteries (Tazmania) that also have grid level capacities. Just making hydrogen instead of ion transport is too inefficient to me. I understand some area in Australia is doing a distributed, smart battery. Coordinated, micro grids offers an even greater efficiency as the waste heat can be used for hot water and space heating. Regardless, it amuses me that the Assi need to perform the multimillion dollar engineering experiment. Bob Wilson
Gravity energy storage locations are location limited. Placing a turbine at the bottom of a mine shaft likely has its own increased costs. With a handy CO2 source going from making hydrogen to methane isn't a huge leap. From there, diesel, methanol, and even gasoline become potential products. We won't be able to replace every ICE out there with a plug and battery in a reasonable time frame.
don't know how they could have Surplus Renewables with the frequent intermittent blackouts & brown outs that they have. Isn't that why Tesla has been successful there, installing massive battery backups? So that it could stabilize their grid? .
A black or brown out's cause might have nothing to do with the electric generation source. Hundreds of wind turbines don't help you if suicidal squirrels keep shorting the sole transmission line from them. Batteries work for energy storage, but if this and plug in cars catch on and grow quickly globally, material shortages can easily become an issue. Diversifying doesn't hurt, and this is a small scale test.
With Australia's tepid to visceral response to electric cars, it's going to be a long time before they become accepted there, much less mainstream. So I guess the good thing is we have a long long time to start worrying about it. .
