Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota(ammoniaenergy.org) |
Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota(ammoniaenergy.org) |
However there are far far larger projects going on over the world. China is building multiple GW of wind and solar to power a massive ammonia/green hydrogen site right now. I frequently hear of sites in Spain in the hundreds of MW range.
The US has been pivotal in the invention of these technologies, but hyper-conservatism to protect fossil fuel interests is preventing us from getting the benefits as quickly as we should.
The ammonia plant is built for intermittent operation, so it can shut down or reduce output when there's no wind. No need to store much electrical energy. Storage tanks hold the ammonia. It's a reasonable idea, but is it cost-effective? No numbers are given. Still, fertilizer independence alone is worth something. You can do this anywhere with wind or sun.
https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/us-energy-storage-installat...
(federal subsidies remain intact for battery storage, as of this comment)
My mind goes to energy storage. If it was a smart way to do that, people would probably be doing it, who knows. Well, someone wrote a paper about it in 2022: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DHHNGSP
The cost of wind power and solar power have fallen dramatically, but without accounting for the externalities of CO2 emissions, natural gas is still the cheaper way to make ammonia.