Solar module prices reached a new low this week, says Leen van Bellen, business development manager Europe for Search4Solar, a European purchasing and selling platform for solar products. He tells pv magazine that prices will remain low in the short term.
We also should consider HVDC lines. The longest one right now is in Brazil, and it’s 1300 miles long. With that kind of range, wind in Nebraska can power New York, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, and hydro all around the Mississippi river basin can store it all. We may have enough pumped hydro already that we might not even need batteries, provided we can hook it all up.
HVDC is much more expensive than Hydrogen pipelines, which doubles as storage and transmission, and can provide continent wide resilience, even when local renewables provide much cheaper power when it is available than either long distance electric or H2 power.
The studies on hydrogen pipelines tend to assume there’s some existing reservoir of hydrogen. Making hydrogen in a green way is expensive, and that completely ruins its economic viability.
The expense part gets taken care of with OP’s solar prices. Battery costs help too.
Not at all. Hydrogen electrolysis efficiency is about 70-80%. When turning it back into electricity, fuel cells are 40-60% efficient. That means your electricity costs are about double for the complete round trip.
Conversely, lithium batteries (and most other types) are over 90% efficient and directly give you electrons.