Renewable Energy Bulk Storage for < $1.00 / KWh Capital Cost as Gaseous Hydrogen (GH2) and Liquid Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3) C-Free Fuels

Electricity from diverse renewable energy (RE) resources may be converted to gaseous hydrogen (GH2) and anhydrous ammonia (NH3) carbon-free fuels and stored at < $1.00 / KWh capital cost in large, solution-mined salt caverns for GH2 and in large, refrigerated, “atmospheric” liquid surface tanks as NH3. This stored chemical energy is gathered and transmitted and distributed via continental-scale underground pipeline systems and converted to useful work, at residential to industrial scales, via combined-heat-and-power (CHP) plants, via direct space heating and cooling, and as transportation fuels. We thus solve RE’s severe transmission, storage, and integration problems via complete, optimized, systems design — from photons and moving air and water molecules to delivered energy services. We need to supply all energy, not just electricity, from diverse renewable energy (RE) resources, both distributed and centralized, where the world’s richest RE resources — of large geographic extent and high intensity — are stranded: far from end-users with inadequate or nonexistent gathering and transmission systems to deliver the energy. Electricity systems may be suboptimal, technically and economically, at such large scale. Electricity energy storage cannot affordably firm large, intermittent renewables at annual scale, while carbon-free GH2 and liquid NH3 fuels can: GH2 in large solution-mined salt caverns, NH3 in steel surface tanks, both pressurized and refrigerated.