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0 pointsGibbon12y ago0 comments

The cost of storing electricity in batteries is down to $80/MWH.

This evening batteries in California peaked at 6.3GW. Last year they were peaking at 2.3GW in the evening. I think that means is they installed 15GWH worth of batteries last year. That's close to 0.4KWH per person.

The whole economic landscape of solar and batteries has changed radically in the last 4 years.

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distances2y ago· 2 in thread

Everyone talks about batteries but I'd imagine that hydrogen and ammonia production would be much more lucrative, no? Much cheaper storage and potentially direct usage in industry, or just consuming back to electricity when prices are high.

Gibbon1OP2y ago

I've done calcs for using hydrogen from electrolysis for ammonia production.

I think it's 40kwh per kg to make hydrogen. Ammonia is 17.6% hydrogen by weight.

So you need 7kwh/kg to make ammonia. At $40/MWH

Cost is $280/ton.

This source (I can't vouch for) range is $303/ton to $1058

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...

Looking more, appears that ammonia producers are already building out electrolysis plants. You don't hear about this because the companies that do this don't care what the public thinks about anything.

https://ammoniaenergy.org/articles/technology-status-ammonia...

distances2y ago

Thanks for providing numbers. There's a lot of hype currently about hydrogen/ammonia production and how cheap renewables can change the energy infrastructure. Will be interesting to see how this will actually turn out.

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