Originally Posted By: WyrTwister
Originally Posted By: PimTac
This pertains to the idea of converting hydrogen which would be produced by solar and wind power into ammonia which can then be transported and reconverted back into hydrogen. It sounds interesting.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-08/hy...section=science
The whole thing is likely feel good fluff . If you are going to make ammonia , use it for fertilizer .
If you are producing electricity via solar or wind , pump it back into the grid . And there by reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned . However , w/o subsidiaries , I think it is questionable if wind or solar are cost effective ? That is a subject that is little discussed . Probably because it is not politically correct to question " green energy " sources .
The problem with wind is that most often when you need it, it isn't producing and conversely, when you don't, it is. Then you are trying to give it away at negative market prices at 3AM on a Wednesday and having to pay for curtailment because you can't dump all of it. See Ontario market for a shining example of that Gong Show.
Today in Ontario, our >4,400MW of wind started off producing 160MW. That's up from yesterday where it was producing 10MW. That's not a typo. But, as I'm typing this, we've gained a bit of wind and are now up to 740MW! Of course to accommodate the differential between potential generation and actual, we are burning Natural Gas, 4,331MW right now to be precise. That's on top of the nukes that were producing 10,031MW this AM when the wind was producing 160MW, and 10,313MW now, following demand. Hydro-Electric, performing baseload with the nukes, started off at 3,306MW and is presently producing 3,410MW.