Global Warmists back off on prediction

[HungLikeJesus]

The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) is working on a project to produce hydrogen using a wind turbine. At first it sounds like a dumb idea. The turbine creates electricity, then uses that to produce hydrogen, then incurs all the efficiency losses of compression, etc. as mentioned above by tw. Why not use the electricity directly? It seems much more efficient.

There's enough wind potential in Wyoming to power half of the country. They could put up turbines all over the state. The problem is that the places with the best wind don't have transmission lines, and transmission lines cost about $1 million per mile.

Another problem with wind is that it's not dispatchable, meaning it's great when the wind is blowing, but it can't be turned up and down to match the load. (Coal-fired power plants are called base-load, or firm, power. Firm power is valued more than intermittant resources, like wind and solar.)

If there is too much wind-power in a generation portfolio, the system becomes unreliable (above about 20% of generation), because there is too much production variation. This requires the utilities to have stand-by power, which are generators (e.g. natural gas) that are ready to ramp up very quickly if the wind dies.

Using wind (or solar) power to create hydrogen, instead of feeding directly in to the grid, can make wind power into a firm source; or the hydrogen can be bottled and used for transportation fuel.

This is an example of a creative solution that might not be obvious at first glance.