An energy system dominated by solar and wind energy does not require baseload power stations to guarantee supply security, German research academies have said. “The academy project ‘Energy Systems of the Future’ (ESYS) has concluded that a secure energy supply is also possible without baseload power plants,” said the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities.
Baseload power plants supply electricity continuously, whereas so-called residual load plants run only intermittently when needed. “A combination of solar and wind energy with storage, a flexible hydrogen system, flexible electricity demand and residual load power plants will be necessary for a climate-friendly and reliable electricity supply,” the academies said. The German government plans to use hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine plants to back up its renewables-based future electricity system.
The researchers modelled the potential of four baseload technologies: nuclear power plants, geothermal energy, natural gas power plants with CO2 capture, and nuclear fusion power plants. Their results showed that baseload plants could become part of future energy systems if they save costs – a scenario the scientists consider unlikely. Baseload plants’ greatest impact on the overall system is that their surplus electricity could be used to run electrolysers, which would turn electricity into hydrogen, they said.
“For baseload power plants to lead to a substantial cost reduction, their costs would have to fall significantly below the level forecast today,” said Karen Pittel, who heads the ifo Institute’s Center for Energy, Climate and Resources, and is also deputy chair of the ESYS board of directors. “In fact, we estimate that the risks of cost increases and delays in baseload technologies tend to be even higher than with the further expansion of solar and wind energy.”
It’s very likely that hydrogen will fail, mainly because it isn’t easy to deal with and is generally way less efficient than the alternatives. But it won’t fail until everyone in the business can “grift” as much as possible from governments around the world.
Industry deals with hydrogen all the time and has been doing it for decades. ASME has just released a new Standard for hydrogen piping for power generation.
Siemens Energy Joins Forces for Bold 100% Hydrogen HL Gas Turbine Leap
Siemens Energy is teaming with UK power giant SSE to develop a combustion system that will allow its flagship SGT5-9000HL gas turbine to run 100% on hydrogen while maintaining the flexibility to operate with natural gas and blends of the two.
The two companies on Dec. 9 launched “Mission H2 Power,” a project that will support the decarbonization of SSE’s 849.45-MW Keadby 2 Power Station in North Lincolnshire, which began operations in March 2023. The power plant, whose efficiency of 64.18% was verified by the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS in May 2024, holds the title for the most powerful combined cycle power plant and the most efficient combined cycle power plant.
Great thermal efficiency, but aren’t they counting starting with the hydrogen already existing – what is also needed is to account for the losses in creating the hydrogen.
(The same full accounting needs to be done for other fuel sources as well since there is a non-zero energy cost to obtain the fuel – it is just that with hydrogen it is most likely MUCH larger as a percentage)
We do not account for the losses in creating natural gas for natural gas fired power plants. We do not account for the losses in creating coal for coal fired power plants.
I guess you didn’t read my full post. I said that.
But, IMO it has been ignored because for NG it is only about 10-15% overhead. But with green H2 you only get 20-30% of the energy consumed back when you use it.
Maybe my numbers are wrong…I’d like to know
There is a concept called EROI, energy return on investment.
“Energy return on investment (EROI) is a ratio that measures the amount of usable energy delivered from an energy source versus the amount of energy used to get that energy resource.”
With an EROI less than one (less than 0.25 !!) hydrogen is not what one might call a thermodynamic darling.
I do not think your number (less than 0.25) is correct. Here is a detailed analysis which comes up with 8.5 as the number. See below:
Impact on Whole System EROEI
We now have a view of total input energy for the system. 1,250TWh (Eig) for the renewables generators, and Eis is the sum of 30TWh for the electrolysers, 21.6TWh for the storage caverns, 33TWh for the hydrogen generators and 8.3TWh for the hydrogen transmission system.
Plugging this into the equation above gives us an EROEI for the whole system of around 8.5.
Yes, there is quite a wide spread on the EROI estimates which depend upon the calculation methods, assumptions and what is or isn’t included.
For example, this paper from last year looking at green hydrogen produced with PV electricity and came up with an EROI of 0.97 (less energy output than went into it).
But your study only uses solar PV electrical energy as the energy input for electrolyzers. Green hydrogen can be better produced with nuclear power, wind power, geothermal power and hydro power - all of which provide much higher EROI than solar.
The high EROI values of 7 or 8 are, IMO, a bit nonsensical because they are based on collecting solar PV or wind power which, in their analysis counts as basically no energy invested. It is just using the wrong metric to try and show hydrogen as more useful than it is. There are probably some times when hydrogen is more useful than other fuels…but when electricity could be used ~directly (like in cars), trying to use hydrogen is just wasting energy.
