But at that point why have hydrogen-based or ammonia-based energy infrastructure? Why not use the excess electricity to make fertilizer and use that to grow crops?
Are the factories that make hydrogen so much cheaper than the factories that make fertilizer that when you build enough factories to make use of all the excess electricity (meaning they’re idle 80% of the time), the cost of having those factories make fertilizer instead of hydrogen is greater than the cost of building and maintaining the entire infrastructure for using hydrogen or ammonia as energy storage/fuel?
Its not fertiliser instead of hydrogen, hydrogen is a required ingredient for the haber-bosch process. Currently we get the hydrogen from fossil fuels because it is cheaper.
But at that point why have hydrogen-based or ammonia-based energy infrastructure? Why not use the excess electricity to make fertilizer and use that to grow crops?
Are the factories that make hydrogen so much cheaper than the factories that make fertilizer that when you build enough factories to make use of all the excess electricity (meaning they’re idle 80% of the time), the cost of having those factories make fertilizer instead of hydrogen is greater than the cost of building and maintaining the entire infrastructure for using hydrogen or ammonia as energy storage/fuel?
In reality that does not happen on its own. Once you figure in the use of land, water and energy to grow crops it’s the by far most inefficient way.
Even without the additional costs in farming and just assuming all those plants happily grow on their own, plants are still losing… “Photosynthesis turns roughly 3 percent of incoming sunlight into organic compounds […] “Artificial photosynthesis”—comprising a PV cell that provides the electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen—turns roughly 10 percent of incoming sunlight into usable hydrogen[…]”
Its not fertiliser instead of hydrogen, hydrogen is a required ingredient for the haber-bosch process. Currently we get the hydrogen from fossil fuels because it is cheaper.