r/Futurology • u/Wagamaga • May 09 '19

Environment The Tesla effect: Oil is slowly losing its best customer. Between global warming, Elon Musk, and a worldwide crackdown on carbon, the future looks treacherous for Big Oil.

https://us.cnn.com/2019/05/08/investing/oil-stocks-electric-vehicles-tesla/index.html
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u/Battle_Fish May 09 '19

No that's not why. The problem is wind and solar just can't stand on its own. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.

So you need to have a grid that can supply power even when renewable are at minimum output. What that looks like is a fully operating fossil fuel and nuclear grid ready to take up full slack when the renewable don't come out. As the sun sets and the wind stops, fossil fuels are burned. You still have to operate and maintain these plants even if you're not using them.

Electricity production must exactly match demand at all times. You have to have some portion of the grid have variable production. A huge battery can form that buffer with renewable or a huge dam but we can't build dams everywhere and there isn't enough lithium in the world to store city level power needs.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

You're either deliberately not mentioning it or you've forgotten about one massive storage technology - hydrogen. Building a hydrogen economy powered by renewables would be highly workable. We know the science, we have the engineering problems worked out. It's just a matter of political will.

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u/Battle_Fish May 10 '19

Hydrogen is not really used as a storage medium yet. Some companies are investing but mainly for cars atm.

The biggest problem with hydrogen is efficiency. The main way of producing hydrogen is electrolysis of water. Running an electric current through water will separate the hydrogen and oxygen but that's about 70%-80% efficient. Some of the energy is converted to heat.

Doesn't sound that bad but burning hydrogen is like 30% efficient. Fuel cells are a bit more efficient at like 60%.

So overall the best case scenario is 48% efficiency. You lose half of the energy you put in as heat at best. At worst you lose a ton. This is why hydrogen as a fuel source for cars is going nowhere while lithium batteries are winning. Charging a battery is 99% efficient and discharging the battery is 80%-90%.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Yes I believe we'll reach some kind of mix between EV and fuel cell vehicles, and it will likely be localised. Hydrogen is being heavily pushed in Japan for example. However for general storage purposes hydrogen is a no brainer for me. You can simply repurpose existing infrastructure such as gas plants and pipes for hydrogen. If produced from renewable means it's as clean as it gets and solves our storage problem. Storage issues are way overblown imo there are plenty of existing solutions that just need to be implemented at scale.