There are, of course, OTHER parts of a hydrogen storage system, whose costs scale with the input and output power, not the stored energy. And these other parts (and the lower efficiency) make hydrogen uncompetitive for diurnal load leveling.
But hydrogen is superior to batteries if the goal is to store the energy for considerably longer periods. It is TOTALLY about short vs. long term.
As for whether hydrogen is "incredibly expensive": for the things it is suitable for, it is cheaper than the alternatives. Try to optimize a CO2-free power system using just wind, solar, and batteries in Europe, vs. one that also includes hydrogen storage. The latter is cheaper! It's also cheaper than a system that includes new nuclear power plants
> In what world is $800 to $1,400 per kilowatt hour per year, "so damn cheap"?
Your units there don't even make sense. BTW, I hope you aren't taking ratio of energy capacity to power-related costs suitable for diurnal storage and applying that to a seasonal storage system. The latter charges up and discharges over months, so the ratio is very different.
Right, and this claim is totally false. It's not cheaper than batteries, let alone 200x cheaper.
Where are you getting this figure that hydrogen storage is 200 times cheaper than battery storage?
> But hydrogen is superior to batteries if the goal is to store the energy for considerably longer periods. It is TOTALLY about short vs. long term.
No, it's not. Again, are you just completely ignoring the costs presented in the study?
> As for whether hydrogen is "incredibly expensive": for the things it is suitable for, it is cheaper than the alternatives. Try to optimize a CO2-free power system using just wind, solar, and batteries in Europe, vs. one that also includes hydrogen storage. The latter is cheaper! It's also cheaper than a system that includes new nuclear power plants
No, it's not. Again, even just providing 1 day's worth of nuclear power costs over 9 trillion dollars every year using the optimistic estimates. Using the mid range estimates this figure is $16T per year.
> Your units there don't even make sense.
Cost of storage is measured in both capacity in duration. The unit answers the question, "how much does it cost to provide X amount of storage over Y duration"? Hence, kilowatt hour per year. Or $ KWh/yr as shown in the study. I'm not sure what is hard to understand about cost per kilowatt hour per year. $800 KWh/yr means it costs $800 dollars to provide 1 kilowatt hour of storage capacity for one year.
Let's look at a source of numbers, shall we?
Go to https://model.energy/ and click on "Show advanced assumption settings".
Now scroll down a bit:
Battery energy capital cost: 142 Euro/kWh
Hydrogen energy capital cost: 0.7 Euro/kWh
What's the ratio of those? About 200!
It should be really clear why these numbers are what they are, if you understand what they mean. The hydrogen energy capital cost is the cost of creating the underground storage cavern where the compressed hydrogen will be stored. It does not include electrolyzers, compressors, turbines, or generators -- those are all POWER related capital costs.
The NREL hydrogen cavern cost numbers are even lower.
What this means is that if you want to expand the energy storage capacity of your storage system, but keep the input/output power the same, hydrogen scales FAR better than batteries do (with the partial exception of flow batteries, but the energy capacity related costs of those will still be higher than that of hydrogen storage, due to the need for tanks and expensive metals like vanadium for the anolyte/catholyte). And THIS is why hydrogen is far superior to batteries for long term storage.
> Now scroll down a bit:
> Battery energy capital cost: 142 Euro/kWh Hydrogen energy capital cost: 0.7 Euro/kWh
> What's the ratio of those? About 200!
You realize that this site is a calculator, right? It's a calculator used to calculate how much energy would cost for the cost values supplied. You can put whatever you want for that field. This site isn't a study. The value for this figure comes from an external pay walled link. And it looks like that link isn't even talking about storing hydrogen, but storing methane produced from hydrogen gas (power to gas). Methane is much easier to store and is more energy dense by unit of volume, as well as makes use of existing natural gas transportation infrastructure. But power to gas needs an external source of carbon dioxide.
And this isn't the actual cost of hydrogen storage, only the capital cost of constructing a storage container. Which is kind of a ridiculous figure to provide for storing gas in a cavern: the storage container is already built for you. But this goes back to the problem of geographic limitation: you can only store hydrogen in a limited set of places. This is like saying we should just power all our energy needs with hydroelectricity and geothermal power.
> And this isn't the actual cost of hydrogen storage, only the capital cost of constructing a storage container.
Of course. If you had been reading what I wrote, you would know I know that. The total cost in the model is obtained by adding the energy related cost and the power related cost (as well as the cost of the input energy). And no, the cavern is not already built for you, it's produced by solution mining of an existing salt formation.
Follow the NREL link if you want data that's not behind a paywall. Their numbers are even lower.
But anyway, the basic point I've been making is extremely elementary, and it's remarkable and more than a little appalling that you are unable to understand it. You need to step back and stop embarrassing yourself.
This plan is to repurpose existing mines. Yes the cavern is already built for you as far as the cost estimates are concerned.
> But anyway, the basic point I've been making is extremely elementary, and it's remarkable and more than a little appalling that you are unable to understand it. You need to step back and stop embarrassing yourself.
And by resorting to insults you've demonstrated that you are not interested in participating in good faith. This is the exact opposite of what you want to do if you want to convince someone that your claims are correct.
> Yes, the cost to store hydrogen for LONG TERM STORAGE is higher than the cost to store electricity in batteries for SHORT TERM STORAGE. But the cost to store hydrogen for long term storage is LOWER than the cost to store electricity in batteries for the long term.
> If you are comparing batteries short term with hydrogen long term, you are comparing apples and oranges.
I'm not comparing anything. I'm providing a source on the cost of hydrogen storage, to refute your unsubstantiated claim that hydrogen storage is cheap.
And as it turns out this cost is extremely expensive, regardless of whether it's used for short term or long term storage.
> Your study does NOT say batteries are cheaper than hydrogen for long term storage. They could not possibly be cheaper for that, since there are too few charge/discharge cycles to amortize the batteries' very high cost per kWh of capacity.
Correct, this study is about the cost of hydrogen not a comparison versus batteries. And for the second time, nowhere did I compare hydrogen against batteries. My reply doesn't even mention batteries once.
All I used this study for was tho find an estimate for the cost of hydrogen storage. And that cost is $1,400 per kilowatt hour per year for normal estimates and $800 per kilowatt hour per year for optimistic estimates. This is incredibly expensive, contrary to your claim that the cost of hydrogen storage is "so damn low".
> You seem to be saying "just use short term storage!". But that's not a legitimate approach, since there are long term variations in supply and demand. Short term storage only applies to short term variations.
The point is that it's extremely expensive, and not a viable solution for any type of storage. Short term or long term. The cost per kilowatt hour of storage is just way too high to be viable. $800 per kilowatt hour per year for the optimistic estimates, and $1,400 for realistic estimates is insanely expensive. And again this is assuming that the electricity provided to convert water to hydrogen is free.
In what world is $800 to $1,400 per kilowatt hour per year, "so damn cheap"? For hydrogen to achieve even just 1 day's worth of energy storage for the USA (11.5 TWh daily usage) at a cost of $800 per kilowatt hour per year would cost $9 trillion dollars per year. And remember, that's the optimistic estimate and assuming that the energy used to produce hydrogen is free.
This isn't about short term vs long term storage. Hydrogen storage is incredibly expensive, it's not "so damn cheap".