While wind is more expensive than solar, and has issues highlighted in article, the higher capacity factors, and production outside of midday, means less battery capacity is needed to serve renewables, and batteries get charged more often.
A key to bringing down transmission costs for wind, especially offshore where transmission is the highest cost component, is hydrogen production. Picking up H2, or refueling, by trucks and ships can provide cheaper energy than transmission lines. Pipelines are even cheaper with enough volume, and double as storage.
Just a reminder, hydrogen power is a meme sponsored nearly exclusively by the oil industry to divert funds away from actual green energy.
Green H2 does not benefit oil industry at all. It is only basis for a H2 economy because such an economy has to be 100% clean (FF derived H2 has less net energy content than original FF), and the essential rationale for an H2 economy is one where enough renewables to provide 100% of electricity every day needs to overproduce on most days, and H2 electrolysis is an automated way of providing transportable/exportable fuel that converts to electricity at high enough efficiency. The transportation cost advantage of H2 over electric transmission is enough to overcome the efficiency loss of creating it when the electric energy is cheap enough. 2-4c/kwh is enough for cheaper energy delivery by H2.
While Toyota has made great research/development in fuel cells, I agree that they have had a “don’t buy an EV until you see our next model of the Mirai”, and oil companies bs about “blue H2” potential as path to fish for more subsidies, the anti-H2 fan boys are actually EV/battery investors. H2 economy requires batteries, and does have vehicle applications, but the main reason for it is that it is only path to 100% renewable energy.
The good match for wind, and offshore wind especially, is that many places achieve full electric demand coverage from solar alone on some days. On those days, adding batteries with more solar could achieve solar coverage over 24 hours. If it is windy at the same time, no wind energy would get sold those days, and then no additional renewables would be economic in that region, and higher demand days would not get covered by renewables. H2 is path for, wind especially, to sell/monetize all of their energy produced, but also bypass, for all renewables, grid transmission bottlenecks that monopolies don’t mind being bottlenecks if it increases their discretionary power in providing energy permission.
The issue with hydrogen is that is diffuses and leaks straight trough metal pipes, and makes the metal brittle in the process. But… that property could also be used to create super dense storage, by intentionally diffusing it into something like aluminium
Plastic/FRC pipes solve the leakage problem. They are also salt water resistant. Soft steel NG distribution pipes have low leak rates as well. Converting hard steel NG transmission pipes is possible by lining them in plastic. In any near future, H2 only new pipes would be built. H2 is more valuable when it is pure because it has higher efficiency electric conversion than NG, as well as being an ingredient to several important chemicals.
That’s conveniently ignoring that the type of plastic or rfc you need are not quite cheap or quick to make
Spoolable FRP pipes up to 4" in diameter can fit on a truck. Rated for 200bar. Pre covid, this was quoted as $50k/km as full deployment cost with 10s of km per day buildout rate. Spoolable pipe that can fit on ships has no diameter limit.
I don’t know details of manufacturing process, but spools, plastic pipe extrusion, and fiber reinforcement should be highly automatable.
Not every random frp is suitable, hydrogen will fit trough most plastics and fibres. So… the cheapest crap won’t Just do the trick
PE pipes used for NG seem “good enough” https://www.pe100plus.com/PPCA/HYDROGEN-TRANSPORT-IN-POLYMER-PIPES-FOR-NATURAL-GAS-DISTRIBUTION-TEN-YEARS-OF-EXPERIENCE-p1737.html
PTFE is known to be better. Fiber reinforcement is mostly an outside layer to increase pressure resistance. Putting PE or PTFE inside existing steel pipes would also work.
PTFE and chemicals used in its production are some of the best-known and widely applied PFAS, which are persistent organic pollutants. PTFE occupies more than half of all fluoropolymer production, followed by polyvinylidene fluoride (PVdF).
You should read what you linked. It says:
- the hydrogen leaks more than natural gas
- this type of plastic degrades even when not in use
- they have not looked into the issue of hydrogen diffusing out trough the plastic
I wouldn’t say a pipe underground that you have to dig up every year to check if it’s not falling apart on it’s own is a great option
