At Terraform Industries we believe in a future where energy is universally cheap, clean, and abundant. We’re developing a scalable electrolyzer to deliver the cheapest possible green hydrogen…
The tradeoff they’re talking about, where lower capital expenditures allow them to run a less efficient electrolyzer when the sun shines or the wind blows is something I expect to see a lot more of in industrial process design.
They’re assuming a monopoly on load-shifting the cheap power.
Any process with fixed costs lower than the electrolyser will just expand that stage of the supply chain and buffer the inputs and outputs.
Industrial heat is trivially stored at much higher density per volume in bricks, sand, or graphite.
Low grade heat is way easier to store in a pond.
Any variance with more than 100 cycles/yr is better served by batteries.
So you’re left with electrolysers running at 1-5% capacity factor if you want the “unwanted” electricity. Otherwise you’re paying the same as anyone else not drawing from a battery.
This means that, assuming a $100/kW electrolyser (far cheaper than exists) pulling 70kWh/kg including compression, and feeding a load at 30-90% efficiency vs. electricity you are paying $5k-30k per kW of load you feed.
The tradeoff they’re talking about, where lower capital expenditures allow them to run a less efficient electrolyzer when the sun shines or the wind blows is something I expect to see a lot more of in industrial process design.
They’re assuming a monopoly on load-shifting the cheap power.
Any process with fixed costs lower than the electrolyser will just expand that stage of the supply chain and buffer the inputs and outputs.
Industrial heat is trivially stored at much higher density per volume in bricks, sand, or graphite.
Low grade heat is way easier to store in a pond.
Any variance with more than 100 cycles/yr is better served by batteries.
So you’re left with electrolysers running at 1-5% capacity factor if you want the “unwanted” electricity. Otherwise you’re paying the same as anyone else not drawing from a battery.
This means that, assuming a $100/kW electrolyser (far cheaper than exists) pulling 70kWh/kg including compression, and feeding a load at 30-90% efficiency vs. electricity you are paying $5k-30k per kW of load you feed.