Comment

Comment by credit_guy

I don't know why you are saying that. Batteries are expensive. To recoup the capital expense you need to charge and discharge them daily (so you can buy the electricity cheap and sell it expensive and you get a profit). If you want to use them for long term storage, then you buy cheap electricity in the summer, sell it for a profit in the winter, do the same each year, and find out in a few years that you are broke.

With hydrogen, the storage is cheap. We already store natural gas in tanks. We can switch to hydrogen. Maybe hydrogen will leak more, but 1. hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas and 2. the square-cube law tells you that for large tanks you don't really care about leakage.

I don't think we will find an alternative to hydrogen for long term storage of electricity.

parent credit_guy 3 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton