Is this the best energy storage ever?

Any energy storage is good storage

A "Power-To-Gas" system is a great idea. Instead of putting energy into batteries to be called upon later, it can be put into producing hydrogen to be burned later.

What makes that a good idea?

The grid needs to match the production of electricity to what is being used. Too much energy production when there is no demand starts to break things; And not enough energy when demand is great causes voltage sags that will cause brown-outs.

So the production of power needs to speed up and slow down to match demand. But the sun doesn’t care. The sun will shine brightly in the afternoon and have our solar panels delivering electricity as much as they can regardless what the grid wants.

Hydro plants have a similar problem. You might think they speed up and slow down a hydro plant to match demand, but that doesn't work. Instead, they just shift the electric production to pumping the water back into the reservoir to be used again later. It's simple and it works.

And the current solutions to solve this problem in grid solar is to either put the excess electricity into batteries or into making hydrogen gas.

Let's take a look at how the hydrogen gas solution, or better known as 'power-to-gas', works.

Does it really work? Wouldn’t that be less efficient?

Yes, it works. And it uses equipment that is already on the shelf so it is relatively inexpensive to design and install. And it can be created quickly for the same reason.

And despite the low efficiency of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is worse than battery storage, it’s not a bad trade-off. The lower percentage of energy returned from the energy spent to get hydrogen is mitigated by its simple low-cost implementation and a relatively longer system life.

The secret to its simplicity is that the gas mixes directly into the natural gas system. There are no storage tanks, no pressurizing, no transporting hydrogen by vehicle, or creating a new pipeline distribution system. The gas is added to the natural gas line that is already passing by.

It doesn't change how the natural gas burns. In fact, the hydrogen will be quite dissipated in the natural gas. But it will not go to waste.

Batteries are better

That may or may not be true. We haven't had a situation where solar was over-producing before and solutions haven't been tested over time.

We suspect that batteries give us more control and may be more useful for the grid, but the capital cost of a battery storage system is fairly high. And installation will take some time. So we might consider quickly creating power-to-gas systems now and wait until a better battery solution can be installed over time.