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Solar Panels Are Now Producing So Much Power That They’re Leaving Nuclear Plants in the Dust: "Solar is now the engine of the power transition." (futurism.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 2 days ago (6 children)

So, why isn't everybody building hydrogen burning generators?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Right, because hydrogen is not working. It's expensive to produce but most importantly incredibly hard to store and very dangerous if it catches fire.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

    Because hydrogen-ready power plants are not the same as natural gas power plants, as hydrogen gas is not a drop-in replacement for natural gas. And right now, when natural gas is still relatively cheap and renewable energy is not yet absolutely dominating the energy mix, politicians are fearing the cost of building the infrastructure for generating, transporting, storing and burning hydrogen gas.

    In the future, hydrogen gas plants promise to be the best fit to pair renewable energy with, but right now the cost of it and the availability of fossil fuels do not force the hand of the people responsible for planning the future of the energy grid.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    In the distant future, I see purely renewables backed by hydrogen, and nothing else. But not in our lifetime. Over produce with renewables everywhere, and store the excess by using it to produce hydrogen, then store the hydrogen to power anything when renewables isn't viable. The development and build out of renewables has started, but it'll be a long time time will over produce, and the build out and development of hydrogen hasn't really started yet.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    Of cause it has started. Germany has plans of what is to be its hydrogen backbone. Electricity is set to be about 80 % renewables in 2030. So slowly starting to build up the hydrogen infrastructure starts now.

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