Re:Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
by marcosdumay on Friday November 11, 2022 @11:27AM
(#33562803)
"Extremely" is really not a good way to describe it.
Yes, salt domes are quite viable. They are more the "expensive" kind of storage, and require a lot of scale. They are probably not economically viable for electricity storage as it's usually understood, but they are cheap enough that it's perfectly viable to dig them at a loss for societal assurance. They are certainly a lesser drag on the economy than nuclear power.
AFAIK the vast majority of depleted gas fields can't be used for hydrogen storage. The ones that can are obviously a major gain, but those aren't enough to sustain a society.
Storing hydrogen is perfectly viable, and won't have any catastrophic impact on electricity prices. But the "extremely easy" is a bit too optimistic.
If the thesis is that electrical energy will be hyper abundant 80% of the time and deeply scarce the remaining 20% (which is the case if you use only solar and wind) and that periods of scarcity are correlated - so a "bad" day is likely to be preceded and followed by other "bad" days, then large scale hydrogen storage is quite a good match to get you through your worst week.