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Solar Panels Are Now Producing So Much Power That They’re Leaving Nuclear Plants in the Dust: "Solar is now the engine of the power transition." (futurism.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 1 week ago (6 children)

Adding to the other answer, for longer lulls in energy generation, the power can be used to create hydrogen gas that can be burnt in gas plants.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    So, why isn't everybody building hydrogen burning generators?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Right, because hydrogen is not working. It's expensive to produce but most importantly incredibly hard to store and very dangerous if it catches fire.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (1 child)

    Because hydrogen-ready power plants are not the same as natural gas power plants, as hydrogen gas is not a drop-in replacement for natural gas. And right now, when natural gas is still relatively cheap and renewable energy is not yet absolutely dominating the energy mix, politicians are fearing the cost of building the infrastructure for generating, transporting, storing and burning hydrogen gas.

    In the future, hydrogen gas plants promise to be the best fit to pair renewable energy with, but right now the cost of it and the availability of fossil fuels do not force the hand of the people responsible for planning the future of the energy grid.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    In the distant future, I see purely renewables backed by hydrogen, and nothing else. But not in our lifetime. Over produce with renewables everywhere, and store the excess by using it to produce hydrogen, then store the hydrogen to power anything when renewables isn't viable. The development and build out of renewables has started, but it'll be a long time time will over produce, and the build out and development of hydrogen hasn't really started yet.

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