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After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

economist.com

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Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#71

Post by kolinko »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #57
speedgoose wrote: post #6

I used to drive a hydrogen car once in a while a few years ago. It was nice to fill the car in a few minutes and get about 300km of range, but that was it. With the hydrogen you have so few refueling stations, they are very expensive, that range anxiety is a thing. To not improve things, reliability is very poor. My work had a hydrogen refueling station on its parking. It was often broken and actually a bit scary to…

When you consider the energy required to produce lithium ion batteries they are actually worse than fuel cells from an emissions perspective: “As an example, a 100kWh battery will give a potential range of 250 miles and, in order to produce that battery, it will take around 20 tonnes of CO2,” he said. “A typical battery lasts for 150,000 miles, so that equates to around 83g/km of CO2. Then, when you take into account…

How are those emissions calculated? Is there anything in the process that needs to generate co2? (like in concrete, where production of concrete generates co2 by itself).

If this co2 is due to electricity/transportation cost then the problem will solve itself with more electricity from green sources.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#72

Post by mrpopo »

GhostVII wrote: post #52
threatripper wrote: post #7

Hydrogen has an efficiency problem. You need to convert other forms of energy to hydrogen at a loss. Then you need to store it and transport it, which is costly and may impose quite some energy cost for cooling or compression. Then you need to convert it back to electricity, also at a loss. If you start at electricity, the electrical grid and batteries would be much more efficient. If you start at oil or gas, you cou…

Electricity has a transmission problem though - there are some parts of the world with lots of clean energy, which we can't fully take advantage of because we can't transport electricity that far. Hydrogen allows us to use that clean energy to power cars in other parts of the world, since you can produce hydrogen in those places and then ship it to places without much clean energy. Also you can presumably stop and st…

Do you know more about hydrogen transport? I heard it is quite more complicated and expensive than LNG (closest equivalent), because hydrogen leaks more easily.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#73

Post by generatorguy »

thinkcontext wrote: post #53
cultofmetatron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like Iceland would do well to export hydrogen from electrolysis

Iceland exports renewable energy in the form of aluminum. They have the potential to develop more energy but it's controversial because of impact on the landscape.

What type of energy can they develop? Iceland is well known for their geothermal energy I wouldn’t have thought that would have a huge impact on the landscape more than any other low rise industrial buildings.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#74

Post by [deleted] »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #8
threatripper wrote: post #7

Hydrogen has an efficiency problem. You need to convert other forms of energy to hydrogen at a loss. Then you need to store it and transport it, which is costly and may impose quite some energy cost for cooling or compression. Then you need to convert it back to electricity, also at a loss. If you start at electricity, the electrical grid and batteries would be much more efficient. If you start at oil or gas, you cou…

sounds like Iceland would do well to export hydrogen from electrolysis

[deleted]

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#75

Post by svara »

threatripper wrote: post #7

Hydrogen has an efficiency problem. You need to convert other forms of energy to hydrogen at a loss. Then you need to store it and transport it, which is costly and may impose quite some energy cost for cooling or compression. Then you need to convert it back to electricity, also at a loss. If you start at electricity, the electrical grid and batteries would be much more efficient. If you start at oil or gas, you cou…

Many of the things you're saying aren't correct, see my other comment (sibling to yours) for references.

Nuclear is not cheap compared to photovoltaics, wind and hydro. Since the former two are bursty, overcapacity in them leads to cheap excess energy at times, which needs to be stored.

Which storage method is the best depends on multiple factors, particularly on the duration of storage, capacity required and frequency of charging/discharging.

Batteries are great for relatively short term storage, but for long term, seasonal storage, hydrogen and pumped hydro are the options we have. Pumped hydro capacity is limited, and the cost of hydrogen production and storage is coming down. So that's where hydrogen makes sense: Long term, high capacity storage.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#76

Post by bogdanu »

chefandy wrote: post #45
bogdanu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't charge your hydrogen car at home, not to mention without any special and expensive equipment.

Can't gas up at home either. By my reckoning, if there was a huge network of hydrogen stations that should do the trick.

Nope, but you can with a BEV. A SMB could afford to offer a low electric charging station; heck, software companies could offer the possibility to charge their employee cars for free as a perk; even a normal outlet would be enough, 8-9 hours would be more than enough for charging.

Maybe the local administration could offer some incentives to companies that have this.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#77

Post by SmokeyHamster »

threatripper wrote: post #7

Hydrogen has an efficiency problem. You need to convert other forms of energy to hydrogen at a loss. Then you need to store it and transport it, which is costly and may impose quite some energy cost for cooling or compression. Then you need to convert it back to electricity, also at a loss. If you start at electricity, the electrical grid and batteries would be much more efficient. If you start at oil or gas, you cou…

>You need to convert other forms of energy to hydrogen at a loss.

When wouldn't it be at a loss? That's just physics. Hydrogen fuel cells aren't a source of energy in and of themselves, they're just a storage medium, like any other battery. And the act of filling them will never by 100% efficient because nothing is, so there will always be loss.

Re: After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

#79

Post by ComputerGuru »

Xylakant wrote: post #42
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also has a tendency to leak. But I mean, that has to be a limitation of current technology, right? There has to be engineering solutions that we can devise to make it as safe statistically as for example gasoline transport?

Hydrogen has the nasty property of leaking through many materials, including metals. It also needs to be kept extremely cold. Both properties make it much harder to transport and store. It’s not clear that technology must exist that makes transporting and storing hydrogen as safe and economically viable as gasoline.

Even storage of helium has largely been solved, and that is far more tricky than hydrogen. It’s just expensive.
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