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Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

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Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#121

Post by bobthepanda »

adrian_b wrote: post #49
bobthepanda wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends a lot on local climate and topography. Seattle has kind of been a bust with them because the hills really reduce the amount of charge, and on top of that the existing bus depots are already full, so switching to electric only would mean having to find and locate space for more bus depots, which is quite difficult.

Hills should never reduce the range, because the energy lost during climbing up is recovered when going downhill. This is one of the great advantages of electric vehicles with batteries, when properly designed. Electric buses with batteries are even more suitable for cities with hills than for cities without hills, because they provide greater energy savings over buses with ICEs. While I have never used buses with ba…

The problem is that the hills in Seattle are quite large, so you are going up for a long period of time and possibly not able to regenerate before you run out of batteries.

The other problem is that because battery weight is so large, that in itself becomes a limiting factor for hilly operation where it is not really relevant for trolleybuses. And trolleybuses can feed current from uphill buses to downhill buses through the wires, but there's no such connection on battery buses.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#122

Post by Ericson2314 »

manchego wrote: post #107

I'm just waiting for flywheel powered buses to make a return: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus

Cool :) but reminds me that all energy storage is scary and an accident waiting to happen.

Flows > stocks, overhead wire for the win!

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#123

Post by nindalf »

adrian_b wrote: post #49
bobthepanda wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends a lot on local climate and topography. Seattle has kind of been a bust with them because the hills really reduce the amount of charge, and on top of that the existing bus depots are already full, so switching to electric only would mean having to find and locate space for more bus depots, which is quite difficult.

Hills should never reduce the range, because the energy lost during climbing up is recovered when going downhill. This is one of the great advantages of electric vehicles with batteries, when properly designed. Electric buses with batteries are even more suitable for cities with hills than for cities without hills, because they provide greater energy savings over buses with ICEs. While I have never used buses with ba…

My grandparents live near those hills. The funny thing is, they’re uphill both ways.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#125

Post by neves »

Why? Because Oil Companies are lobbying for inefficient hydrogen to delay a green revolution:

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/carbon-notes-5-green-hydrog...

> The members of the hydrogen coalition are all obviously incumbent fossil fuel and petrochemical interests looking for a bridge to the new era. If realized, their ambitious hydrogen projects may overload the available supply of green power, for little real benefit. By diverting badly needed clean power, green hydrogen vanity projects may even slow down the energy transition. And the subsidy regimes that are being put in place could become self-perpetuating. As Gernot Wagner and Danny Cullenward recently warned, “hydrogen could become the next corn ethanol”, a ruinously inefficient and environmentally damaging creature of subsidies that are too big to kill.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#126

Post by yummypaint »

calibas wrote: post #109

Back in 2003, President George W. Bush announced the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. At the time, people criticized the effort as an attempt by the oil industry to shift attention away from electric cars. The oil industry knew that hydrogen power wasn't going to be viable anytime soon, while electric cars were already a direct threat to their profits, so they pushed the US government towards hydrogen power. Not to disparag…

It absolutely was. In the event that breakthroughs happened and it became viable faster than expected, the backup plan was to get the hydrogen from fossil fuels to make sure the industry would still get its cut.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#127

Post by int0x29 »

fraserharris wrote: post #119

AC Transit (eg: East San Francisco Bay) performed a detailed 2 year study (July 2020 - June 2022) comparing newer Hydrogen Fuel Cell & Battery -powered buses to existing Diesel, Fuel Cell, & Hybrid -powered buses, 5 of each type. The key results are the Hydrogen Fuel Cells have significantly more expensive infrastructure, fuel, and maintenance costs than Battery. However, both technologies are still less reliable tha…

Only two years? They operated hydrogen buses from 2006 to 2010 and then got some more in 2011 and 2019. There are budget line items for new buses in 2023 and 2024 that I assume got bought

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#128

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kaibee wrote: post #105
giantrobot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanism through which fossil fuel interests work is "grey hydrogen" which is hydrogen produced through processing of fossil sources with no eye towards carbon capture. Grey hydrogen is as polluting as just burning the fossil feedstock but works with an established hydrogen infrastructure. This lets the producers "green wash" their production pipeline by stating in a lies-through-omission manner that their hydro…

> It's the same lie as EVs claiming to be "green" in places where fossil fuel sources dominate electricity production. This is just anti-ev propaganda. First, its kind of a chicken-egg situation: 'its not worth going green for the power grid, all the cars are still ICE' 'oh its not worth building EV cars, the power grid is dirty anyway'. Second, there are lifecycle analyses that show that even if your powergrid is en…

Not only that, it's completely the opposite: One of the biggest impediments to adding more renewables to the grid is aligning generation with load. EVs are rolling energy storage devices. Put EV chargers in workplaces with a setting that says "just make sure the battery has at least 100 miles of charge by quitting time" and you get a full 300 mile charge from 100% renewable energy whenever it's available, still enough to come back tomorrow if it's cloudy today, and a discount for using the charger where that's what happens.

Then you not only charge the EVs from entirely renewable generation, most of them can curtail their load for about a week because typical EVs have around seven times the average commute in total range, and then when renewable generation is at 25% of normal, the capacity added to charge EVs can be directed to less flexible loads because the demand from EVs can be easily delayed for the right price.

Their existence is what makes a grid with a higher percentage of renewables even work.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#129

Post by askvictor »

neves wrote: post #125

Why? Because Oil Companies are lobbying for inefficient hydrogen to delay a green revolution: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/carbon-notes-5-green-hydrog... > The members of the hydrogen coalition are all obviously incumbent fossil fuel and petrochemical interests looking for a bridge to the new era. If realized, their ambitious hydrogen projects may overload the available supply of green power, for little real bene…

Not just to delay, but they're hope is that they'll be able to control it when it happens. Oil companies move fluids, using pipes and tankers. Hydrogen is a fluid. They want to keep doing what they've been doing. Electricity doesn't fit into their M.O.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#130

Post by askvictor »

manchego wrote: post #107

I'm just waiting for flywheel powered buses to make a return: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus

I'm currently reading "The Windup Girl" set in a mostly-post-fossil-fuel future, where most energy storage is springs.
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