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Comment by tlocke | Hacker News Reader

If you build enough renewables, then there comes a point when at times you're generating more than is needed immediately. That surplus electricity can be used to make hydrogen gas by electrolysing water. The gas can be stored indefinitely and burned to generate electricity when needed. So with enough renewables, no fossil fuels are needed.

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In theory, yes, it's possible to store renewable energy for later consumption, but this is not the case right now and rollout of any storage technology might take years without certainty that it will work well. In the current situation, it's either blackouts, or gas/coal, or nuclear when there's no sun and wind.

On the other hand, I can understand why the current situation is like this: Germany boldly betted big time on renewables getting cheap enough, they made it work with backfill options available at the time. I just wish energy storage was tackled sooner as well.

> The gas can be stored indefinitely

Storing hydrogen is far from trivial. It's a bit like trying to store water when you're only allowed to build tanks out of paper.

This is not false, but the economics are not good for the full round trip. There are efficiency losses in the conversion both ways and hydrogen storage is not fun as it is very low density and due to small molecule size, prone to leaking through almost anything. Probably a lot of hydrogen will be produced this way during renewable peaks, but mainly it would be for industrial processes that need it.

this "around the corner" argument is getting tiresome. We have a climate emergency NOW. We are actively hurting our future by continuing to emit carbon NOW. We already have a solution to that problem in the shape of nuclear power.

Instead, we wait on renewables and storage to run the grid at some indeterminate point in the future.

The debate on this issue really is toxic and frustrating. We need all solutions working NOW, not tomorrow, and one of those solutions is widespread nuclear power.

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