
Undersea Microbes Provide Path to Energy Storage - ph0rque
https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2017/undersea-microbes-provide-path-to-energy-storage.html
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johnm1019
I don't see anywhere in the article what they estimate or have tested the full
system efficiency to be.

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Retric
Energy efficiency is not actually that important for this. Currently there are
peaking power-plants that are only in use a couple of dozen hours per year
which are still extremely important.

Granted, even if Methane was 100% efficiently produced your still down to 60%
from burning it. However, the main advantage of Gas turbines is they are cheap
when not in use. Paying even 1$/kWh 1% of the time to provide an extra 10%
power in those rare cases is really not a big deal. (1$ * 0.01 * .1 adds
1/10th of a cent per kWh to average electricity prices.)

Sure, for basic day night cycle adjustments your going to want hydro or
battery storage etc, but you start needing a lot of storage that's very rarely
used if you want 99.99+% up-time.

PS: This of course assumes a significant oversupply on average.

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louithethrid
Shoot them to venus?

