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0 pointsanovikov3y ago0 comments

Not really. Easy calculation using historical data on electricity production and consumption reveals that accepting 50% marginal loss factor (that is, level of renewables penetration on which 50% of power produced by the marginal - "last added" unit will be lost because there is no demand when it is produced), 80% of renewables can be provided with no storage and 90%, with quite minimal, easy to achieve storage, with no need for hydrogen. Which seems to be confirmed by recent Germany data when 50% of renewables has been achieved with effectively no storage and under 10% marginal loss rate.

If you really want 100% renewables, not 90%, then yes, it becomes tricky, but here hydrogen provides a solution.

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epups3y ago· 1 in thread

There is no country using hydrogen for large-scale storage of even 1% of their storage needs (maybe 0.01% but I'm being generous). And for batteries it's much less than that.

Of course you can use renewables for even 100% of your energy needs on a good day. But you will need either nuclear, hydro, coal or gas if you don't want interruptions.

ben_w3y ago

"They have not" does not mean "they cannot". Until recently batteries were just way too expensive, yet now we are building the factories to make the batteries as fast as we can. Likewise, we have not generally used hydrogen because it isn't as convenient as methane, but if e.g. you think your major gas supplier is a warmonger and you want to stop any money going their way, hydrogen is really easy to make.

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