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A comment on Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara. Parent comment

Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by state_less on Thursday September 06, 2018 @04:56PM (#17929480)
Distributed generation seems like it would make sense (with current tech). Italy and Spain could help here.

Maybe you could go from Tunisia to Europe, but supplying African countries seems more attainable.

It'd be nice if you could turn the energy into a gas like methane, pull CO2 out of the atmosphere in the process. Good for the atmosphere and you could transport gas over long distances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

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Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by pmwhite on Thursday September 06, 2018 @05:52PM (#17929924)
I wonder if hydrogen is practical to transport in large quantities. My guess is no.

Your idea of methane, if it could be done efficiently, seems more likely.

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Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by rapnie on Friday September 07, 2018 @02:17AM (#17932240)
Ammonia might be a better way. Easy to produce, store and transport and contains higher hydrogen density than compressed hydrogen (I think).

http://www.ammoniaenergy.org/

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Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by samatman on Friday September 07, 2018 @05:29AM (#17932939)
The biosphere can't handle ammonia accidents at anything resembling the scale of crude oil and natural gas accidents. Methane is the better choice.
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Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by peterashford on Thursday September 06, 2018 @07:14PM (#17930464)
I saw that very recently an Australian company had worked out a way of transporting hydrogen in large quantities by converting it into something else which I conveniently can't remember.
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Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by spangry on Thursday September 06, 2018 @08:50PM (#17931049)
It was the CSIRO converting hydrogen to ammonia for transport, and then back to hydrogen again: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-08/hydrogen-fuel-breakthr...
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