4 Comments

Hey Andy - really interesting post, and I certainly agree with your major takeaways. Thanks also for the pointers to Michael Liebreich’s work.

One important question is around the scale of ultra-long energy storage - is it as high as the ~13% of annual consumption that we currently store? Could it be even higher (up to ~20% in Great Britain as proposed by one of Liebreich’s interviews - worth reading at least the briefing, I put a link at the end) to help compensate for increasing intermittency as renewable sources take over?

If either of those is even close to accurate, then the scale of that market is huge - but it has weird dynamics because a large amount of capital is tied up in stored energy and returns from using that energy are infrequent and unpredictable (tied to weather patterns). Hard to say what a realistic model for a functioning market there would be, but given the scale it could have a major impact on how hydrogen and associated hardware is deployed.

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/large-scale-electricity-storage/

One quick thing - you jumped from “Good Reason…” 2 to 4. If there is a Good Reason 3 that didn’t make it in, let us know what it is!

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Hahaha thanks for the comments. And also for pointing out the Good Reason discrepancy!!!

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Great post Andy.

I think pipeline conversion potential may surprise you

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Thanks! I would love to see that happen.

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