Sometimes you have to intentionally burn some stuff to create a firebreak and save a lot more other stuff.

I do not understand how climate change is analogous to a leaky faucet with respect to anything.

What do you mean by “convert it back”? Convert it back to electricity for the grid? No. We need the hydrogen for important things, like making steel and fertilizer.

As I’ve already explained, we need hydrogen. We need it not for energy storage, but as a useful, important product. Electrolysis of water is pretty much the only way to get it without emitting greenhouse gases. Therefore, the efficiency of it doesn’t really matter, especially if the energy to do it would otherwise go to some dangerous, battery based buy low/sell high scheme.

Back to energy storage: if you’ve got some brilliant solution - get to it. We’re waiting.

No to storing joules in environmentally questionable batteries. Use the energy immediately to produce useful, necessary stuff like fresh water and hydrogen.

I’m not sure what you mean. Natural fresh water supplies are stressed in many regions. We need hydrogen to fuel vehicles and for the production GHG-free steel and fertilizer. Oxygen of course is necessary for medical and industrial applications. Safely handling hydrogen and oxygen is a solved problem and these gases are not polluting if you have to vent to atmosphere. It only makes sense from a wasteful, financially extractive perspective to store extra electricity by environmentally questionable means instead of actually using that energy right away.

I don’t think they should be operating at all.

If we build out our GHG-free power capacity beyond our electricity demand, efficiency isn’t an issue. We need fresh water. We need hydrogen and oxygen. I’m sure there are other convenient things to produce whenever electricity demand falls off. These energy storage and reselling schemes are just destroying value.

Well, I don’t know how we’re supposed to fix the climate while playing nice with bourgeois interests.

There’s also avoiding (or minimizing) the need for storage at all, with “demand shaping”. Basically, we radically overbuild solar, wind, wave, tidal, etc. Normally, that would tank energy prices and be unprofitable, but we also build out some massive, flexible demand to buy this excess power. Because they are extremely overbuilt, the minimal output from these sources during suboptimal conditions is more than enough to meet normal demands; we just shut off the flexible additional demand we added.

Bingo.

There’s no IRL data for the specific model I’ve described, but I’m not sure what you mean by “feelings based”. Using otherwise excess energy instead of storing it is a considered, rational strategy.

None. Use demand shaping instead. I like electrolysis of water, but desalination might make more sense in some regions. I suppose you could even redirect excess electricity to certain computational work.

I don’t think we should be storing and reselling electricity at all.

We need an authoritarian figure to nationalize the energy supply, shut down these wasteful expressions of late stage capitalism, mandate rooftop solar, and build out our nuclear fleet.

We shouldn’t have either.

Per the AP, “There were fires at the Vistra plant in 2021 and 2022”.

https://lemmy.crimedad.work/comment/1484699

Abandon the model of buying and storing electricity when demand is low and reselling power back to the grid when demand is high. Instead, electricity should almost always be generated in excess of demand with the difference going to hydrogen and oxygen production for various medical, industrial, agricultural, and transport applications. If we ever run out of storage, they can be safely vented to atmosphere.

Here’s a video of it disintegrating on reentry: https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662

Thanks for the heads-up!

Oof. Diabolical.