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Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

hydrogeninsight.com

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Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#101

Post by eru »

pfdietz wrote: post #43
cbkeller wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seasonal storage is an interesting idea. Rare grid outages seems pretty easy with batteries if the South Australia example is anything to go by though, and for medium-term storage there's also pumped hydro -- not sure where that compares in cost?

Rare prolonged outages are bad for batteries, since the capital cost is too high. You want something that has very low capital cost, even if it burns a fuel. Simple cycle gas turbines power plants might cost $0.50/W.

> Rare prolonged outages are bad for batteries, since the capital cost is too high.

You could subsidies that by using your batteries to energy to peak load times?

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#102

Post by eru »

jojobas wrote: post #49
pfdietz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is a battery with very particular uses cases. In particular: hydrogen is bad for use cases with large numbers of charge/discharge cycles, because the "cost of inefficiency" is proportional to the number of such cycles. However, for use cases with small numbers of charge cycles, like seasonal storage or backup against rare grid outages, hydrogen's big advantage -- the low cost of storing it, vs. typical short…

Fuel cells might end up better than batteries if you consider the cost/lifetime of batteries. Energy density and safety are also valid considerations, the batteries are already at the limit of what you'd want to sit on top.

Hydrogen isn't really anything you'd be more keen to sit on top than other batteries, or is it?

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#103

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rr808 wrote: post #53

Hydrogen I think has a few good advantages over batteries. Storage is cheaper and faster. Quick charging would be good for buses, trucks and trains. The cheap storage is good for things like ships. Also long term storage for the winter - you could use sunny & windy seasons to build up gas supplies for winter months.

But for personal cars it does not make sence, too complicated. Besides, japan has good solar illumonation all year, do theybreally need seasonal storage?

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#104

Post by ryao »

the-anarchist wrote: post #39
cbkeller wrote: post #12

I'll go one further: Hydrogen does nothing. It's a bad battery. After following this for more than a decade (starting with a bit of undergrad research on possible alternative fuel cell electrode materials -- albeit not a field that I'm in any way involved with any more), it just feels like there's been very little progress on fuel cells, or on storage and transport. Meanwhile, progress on Li-based batteries has been…

I'm lost, I thought hydrogen is the goat. Many manufacturers (eg Benz) push it no?

Hydrogen automotive technologies are a research scientist’s dream. Basically, it represents life long employment with no need to produce useful results.

Management at many automotive companies likely love it for that reason too, since putting money into it makes it look like they are doing something to change when in reality they are not doing anything at all.

Here is a neat fact about hydrogen vehicles. Fueling them causes the nozzles to cool to below freezing temperatures. Try fueling vehicle after vehicle and the nozzle will freeze to each one. Coincidentally, hydrogen vehicle refueling is a sadist’s dream.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#105

Post by eru »

XorNot wrote: post #65
credit_guy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is the way to send energy from sunny places, like Australia to not-so-sunny places, like Japan. You can't send batteries, and you can't lay a cable that long. You can try to pack that energy in a different form of chemical energy like ammonia, or methylcyclohexane, or methanol, or synthetic methane or gasoline. The jury is still out. Europe is investing big time in hydrogen too, so chances are that hydrogen…

You absolutely could lay a cable that long, and IMO we should . There is no reason not to export abundant renewable energy today while we can, and figure out the long term storage issues as we go. Hydrogen can be manufactured anywhere you have seawater and electricity, so it would be a much better use of resources to lay a subsea superconducting cable once and let Japan store power by generating hydrogen locally.

They are building a cable from Australia to Singapore. Going to Japan is in a similar order of magnitude.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#106

Post by p_l »

ryao wrote: post #69
toast0 wrote: post #24

Hydrogen powered vehicles are like natural gas vehicles, but worse. Pressurized fuel tanks expire, and your vehicle becomes a pumpkin, because parts+labor to replace the tank on 15-20 year old vehicle doesn't make sense. But hydrogen is even harder to work with than natural gas. And it's yet another fueling network to build.

If you do not care about costs, there is no need for another network. Just attach an electrolyzer to tap water and you can get hydrogen. If you do care about costs, you would probably not be going down this road in the first place.

NIST actually figured that "electrolyzer at charging station" might actually be most cost-effective option, with combined EV/Hydrogen charging stations.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#107

Post by eru »

naravara wrote: post #70
cbkeller wrote: post #12

I'll go one further: Hydrogen does nothing. It's a bad battery. After following this for more than a decade (starting with a bit of undergrad research on possible alternative fuel cell electrode materials -- albeit not a field that I'm in any way involved with any more), it just feels like there's been very little progress on fuel cells, or on storage and transport. Meanwhile, progress on Li-based batteries has been…

It is a bad battery (along certain dimensions). But there is serious doubt as to whether the world actually has enough Lithium and other rare earths to actually meet battery demand indefinitely, even assuming we get the supply chains and infrastructure to where the materials are infinitely recyclable.

Lithium would just get more expensive in that case, until other materials and techniques (including perhaps hydrogen storage) become more viable.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#108

Post by danans »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #37
jiggawatts wrote: post #31

Hydrogen is 100% an attempt by fossil fuel companies to remain relevant in a "green energy" world. The primary source for hydrogen would be from methane in natural gas, and they could then sell this as a "zero pollution fuel" while continuing their non-renewable energy business as normal. If you read between the lines and look at the companies involved, they're always linked to fossil fuel companies directly or indir…

I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work. They have no domestic oil production, and so few coal mines as to basically be irrelevant: all their fossil fuel is imported. Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce thems…

> I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one?

> Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work

You have conflated Toyota with Japan there. Even in a society dominated by it's megacorps, they are not necessarily the same thing. After all, Nissan brought us the first mass market EV (and yes, they promptly punted on their first mover advantage).

> Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce themselves, literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency,

Any domestic production of hydrogen in Japan would have to be via water electrolysis with electricity, since they have basically no natural gas production. Since that's the case, why not just use the electricity directly and not pay the 40-50% penalty of electrolysis?

> The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there.

> Hydrogen, despite this article's claim, is actually perfect for Japan.

The first statement contradicts the second, because one of the benefits of hydrogen over batteries is that range isn't much of an issue and refueling is fast. That's why the only place it might be viable in ground transport is in long haul trucking in the US.

In Japan, a 200 mile EV would probably be more than sufficient, even for longer trips, for exactly the reason you state.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#109

Post by richardzyx »

So fun to see hydrogen landing on the front page of HN again. We have a team of software engineers working in a hydrogen company (focused mostly in medium to ultra-heavy duty sectors). Curious if people would be interested in an AMA? For questions we don’t know the precise answers to, like the actual financial modeling for hydrogen use cases where it makes sense, we can also easily pull people sitting, virtually, across the hall.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#110

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

cbkeller wrote: post #12

I'll go one further: Hydrogen does nothing. It's a bad battery. After following this for more than a decade (starting with a bit of undergrad research on possible alternative fuel cell electrode materials -- albeit not a field that I'm in any way involved with any more), it just feels like there's been very little progress on fuel cells, or on storage and transport. Meanwhile, progress on Li-based batteries has been…

Batteries are not going to work on things like bigger airplanes, or where you want to transport energy very long distances.

Hydrogen does have niche applications, but it's clearly not a mainstream solution.

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