Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by future_i_snow on Sunday July 24, 2022 @04:39PM
(#32217469)
Northern Africa has a huge opportunity here - build infra that produces hydrogen gas year round, and then export it to Europe. The Sahara Desert is 8_600_000 km², which I imagine is _very sunny_ all year round.
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by threatripper on Sunday July 24, 2022 @06:01AM
(#32211872)
If we produce considerably more electricity than we can use it becomes essentially free energy at those times. Then it could make sense to convert it into gas instead of extracting gas from the earth. Until then the extracted gas will be cheaper and overall more efficient. Local availability of natural gas can be a problem at times, tough.
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by throwaways85989 on Saturday July 23, 2022 @11:47AM
(#32204402)
I think methanol is even a better storage candidate.
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-holy-grail-catalysisturning-me...
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by bufferoverflow on Saturday July 23, 2022 @01:21PM
(#32205387)
Methanol is very nasty though. If it leaks, it leaves you blind or dead.
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by lutorm on Saturday July 23, 2022 @01:56PM
(#32205750)
Leaking natural gas tends to leave you exploded, too...
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by krageon on Saturday July 23, 2022 @02:54PM
(#32206372)
Methanol can also explode (and set things on fire). In terms of a fire hazard they're both very bad.
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by bufferoverflow on Saturday July 23, 2022 @06:12PM
(#32208061)
Leaking methane rises, so it's not a huge problem. We have natural methane leaks all over.
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by whazor on Saturday July 23, 2022 @04:05PM
(#32207091)
There are natural gas leaks on a regular basis here in Europe. It only explodes with a fire source. People smell the gas leak and inform the fire station.
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by lstodd on Saturday July 23, 2022 @08:15PM
(#32208924)
Only if it's doped. Pure methane is odorless.
Re:We're going to need a lot of solar panels
by whoooooo123 on Sunday July 24, 2022 @05:34AM
(#32211762)
Is it ever not doped though? At what point in the process do they put the smell in?
At the distribution point, usually. Some gas networks intended for industrial use don't contain the chemical that makes gas smell as that gas is an input in a chemical process, not burnt for heat.
I believe most natural gas floats though, right?
Are season-level storage facilities already in existence though? The great thing about natural gas is that Europe already has the storage (and distribution) infrastructure. It would be a waste not to reuse that infra.
To my mind, it is seasonal load shifting that is Europe's long term energy problem. Winter energy demand has a bottom that needs to be met. We used to ensure this by stockpiling on seasonal scales. Without stockpiling, and with intermittent production, things will get hairy in winter.
Put differently, you can turn up a gas plant, but you can't turn up a windmill or a solar panel. That scares me.
Batteries and similar technologies are great for daily variation, but their cost per capacity does not allow for practical seasonal storage. For this I imagine we need cheap bulk storage, and can accept low efficiency because we can fill the stockpile with the cheapest excess power.