Comment by martinald
1 year ago
This is really interesting but I am not seeing how it gets to end price. It's saying around 54eur/mwh in the UK with the 2020 technology assumption.
I can see that cost for the solar/wind itself but seems very low for the masses of hydrogen (and associated round trip losses) that it's suggesting. I have read some estimates that it could at least double the price?
If there is otherwise curtailed wind/solar, the RTE doesn't matter very much, since the energy is otherwise thrown away.
I know, but the model above suggests massively overbuilding solar and wind to convert it to hydrogen for storage. That overbuild isn't "free" and I can't see how you can get to €50eur/MWh at the moment for baseload esque power.
The overbuild isn't free, but it's serving two complementary purposes: allowing direct solar/wind to supply enough power even when sun/wind are lower, and to allow production of hydrogen when there's too much power. You get two benefits at a cost that is less than the sum of the cost of doing them independently. The optimization reflects the benefit of this synergy.
The overbuild isn't free but the cost of (renewable) generation is so cheap compared to storage that it's most often cheaper to just build too much.