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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Oh yes, no argument there. We’re already using absolutely huge amounts of hydrogen that are mostly made from fossil fuels right now. Worldwide hydrogen production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire country of Germany. We’ll have to turn that into green hydrogen and use a ton of renewable energy for that. If we make use of surplus wind and solar, it will help a lot with stabilizing the grid.

    What I was thinking of was the idea of producing hydrogen through electrolysis, storing it and later turning it back into electricity through fuel cells. And I’m not sure if that will ever be cheaper and more efficient than newer and cheaper battery technologies like sodium ion or redox flow batteries.


  • First of all, nuclear is anything but reliable. Germany had to supply huge amounts of electricity to France last year because half of their nuclear plants had to be shut down. They would have had major blackouts without support from their European neighbors.

    But my main point is that baseload power does not mix with renewable sources at all. Using batteries and other solutions to store renewable energy during times of little wind or sunlight is actually the goal. But that also eliminates the need for baseload.

    Baseload was never really a feature anyway, it was a necessity. Nuclear and certain types of coal power plants were unable to follow demand, they had to be run at close to full load all the time, either for technical or for economic reasons. To compensate for that, other more expensive plants had to be used to cover times of higher demand.