Apparently it becomes cheaper to make hydrocarbon fuels from solar once price of solar becomes $10 per MWH. Interesting concept. Wonder if at that price most things just shift to electric anyway.
strong comments about this idea. Here are a subset of some of the comments
@TobiasWeg
2 months ago – You are right. His point is a more economic one, if one can get the price of ‘solar’ methane down to below market price, then one could just participate at the market and earn money. At the same time, it would displace fossil methane from the market, which would be a win. I think it can only be part of the solution, but we have places where it is very, very difficult to replace liquid fuels like in aviation, there it could be a useful alternative.
@beyondfossil
2 months ago (edited) – One overlooked grid-scale storage solution is thermal storage: Use large, enclosed volumes of ceramic blocks and use embedded electric heaters to heat the ceramic up with solar, wind and other non-fossil fuel energy. Ceramic blocks are cheap as chips and easy to make. The heat can be used directly in industrial applications (steel, concrete) and it can be turned back to electricity using good old steam turbine technology as needed.
@jimj2683
2 months ago – Maybe the efficiency of using hydrocarbons could be dramatically improved if they used fuel cells made specifically for hydrocarbons? Another option is combustion by a “light engine”. They could be upto around 80% efficient: The fuel heats up a gas that emits only one frequency, then the energy is captured by photovoltaic cells that are optimized for that frequency and the efficiency is much much higher than regular solar cells.
@airfighterxgg3559
2 months ago – What you are discribing is called SOFC “SolidOxideFuelCell”. It can produce electricity from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, also called syngas, which ist produced my the partly burning of the hydrocarbons. Problem ist, they need to run at about 700-800 °C, which is problematic for seals, due to the different thermal expantion of the materials used.
@aryaman05
2 months ago – Bio-ethanol/methanol route is way cheaper than this convoluted method. You could still suck out CO2 from atmosphere with solar PV though.