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.
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.
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.
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.
One thing worth mentioning is companies that make stuff like ammonia and manufacturers in general absolutely hate anything subject to wild price swings. Which natural gas totally does. The other thing is the Russian Ukrainian war exposed manufacturers to supply disruptions of natural gas. And that's generally considered intolerable.
Hence ammonia manufacturers really don't like being dependent on natural gas.
Buying solar to run a electrolysis plant has the benefit that the cost is fixed. Because it's all secured loans with low fixed interest rates. And the supply is guaranteed.
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Isn't energy storage possible? Or at least, isn't that a sensible frontier for protecting the solar investment?
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.
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.
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...
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.
One thing worth mentioning is companies that make stuff like ammonia and manufacturers in general absolutely hate anything subject to wild price swings. Which natural gas totally does. The other thing is the Russian Ukrainian war exposed manufacturers to supply disruptions of natural gas. And that's generally considered intolerable.
Hence ammonia manufacturers really don't like being dependent on natural gas.
Buying solar to run a electrolysis plant has the benefit that the cost is fixed. Because it's all secured loans with low fixed interest rates. And the supply is guaranteed.
Not with any known technology.