Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

We've gotta get the cows to stop farting. 

And me.

I know most of you think that's not a problem, and I hope you're right.

All I know is that I don't know if it's a problem.

That's odd, considering here in TX solar and wind energy outfits are subsidized by the bureaucrats to the point they don't need to be profitable, or particularly productive. 

yup, it's just that it slows development from getting things up and running in months, it take years and years to get things done.

The money is there.
The technology is there.
The want to is there.

Just blocked by paperwork and regulations, and requirements and such.

similar to starting up a nuclear plant

Warren Buffet claims that solar and wind power could and would be much farther along if not for bureaucratic rules, regulations, and other hurdles.  And of course more cooperation from power companies.

Buffett should know. Berkshire Hathaway has a division that owns windfarms in our county, and I am sure elsewhere.

Buffett should know. Berkshire Hathaway has a division that owns windfarms in our county, and I am sure elsewhere.

Buffett knows

Okay... Asking to see if anyone can let me know the problem here.

We have some clean technologies (wind/solar), but they have serious problems. 

One, they're unreliable and not always aligned for peak generation with peak usage. I.e. I posted a couple months ago that the peak in CA for solar generation is during the mid-afternoon hours and peak usage is roughly 4-9 PM when people get home from work. 

Two, and related to the first problem, is that we don't have good energy storage capability. Storage could solve the mismatch between generation and usage issue, because then we could use the stored energy for peak usage rather than relying on quick-fired NG or other CO2-generating technology.

We could use battery storage, but building batteries isn't the cleanest from an environmental perspective and will take significant natural resources to scale. I don't think it's economic (although it maybe can be at a home-scale solar / battery combo).

But, we have hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen is a zero-CO2 emissions fuel when used in a fuel cell, which converts hydrogen into electricity. The problem is "how do you create liquid hydrogen?" because it tends to be a very electricity-intensive process. 

But if we have clean electricity production (wind/solar) and clean usage (hydrogen fuel cells), why don't we use solar/wind to generate liquid hydrogen that we can then store for use in fuel cells for peak demand? 

I'm assuming it's inefficient, costly, and thus uneconomical as a storage tech. But I've never investigated so I'm asking all of you. 

Yeah, producing and then storing hydrogen is inefficient, but folks have looked into this for those reasons.  There are quite a few other ways to store energy in recoverable form that also are being looked at aside from batteries.  Stored hydro is one, already in limited use.  Gravity is another, you use excess power to lift a weight up, and then recover it later.  There are molten salt cycles possible.  

All of them of course are inefficient, and can be pricey.  It's inherent none of them can be anything like 100% efficient.

A possible future is truck stops dispensing hydrogen for trucks and filling stations dedicated to recharging EVs.  It would be like the old days.