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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

#261

Post by ben_w »

smeeth wrote: post #235
svara wrote: post #24

I've been diving into this literature a bit recently, and it's been mostly encouraging. Affordable clean energy is realistic. Clean energy sources are typically the cheapest sources of energy [0]. The intermittent production issue is solvable: At ~150 $/kWh storage, a combination of storage and renewables is the cheapest energy source 95% of the time [1]. The cost of different energy storage methods is coming down ex…

A little Its a little disheartening that current Lithium-Ion battery storage is at ~$350/kWh and is only projected to hit ~$150/kWh in 2050 [0]. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf

Either the government report you cite is overly pessimistic, or bloomberg is overly optimistic: https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-fall-as-mark...

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

#262

Post by [deleted] »

kolinko wrote: post #68
amelius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electric cars with large batteries are a much better solution to hydrogen cars IMHO. Electric cars are still very dangerous when they catch fire though. And the fires are very difficult to control. Especially in multistorey (or underground) car parks. And even more so if there are multiple EVs parked next to eachother.

And gasoline cars aren’t?

[deleted]

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

#263

Post by lejboua »

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…

It seems hydrogen isn't economically sound yet, despite all the progresses made in the last decades: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoa...

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

#264

Post by econcon »

zamfi wrote: post #160
walrus01 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly curious what is the big challenge with keeping large arrays of ground mounted panels clean in Pakistan. The prevailing wage for unskilled labor for a 6 day a week, 45-hour work week for one laborer to clean panels is probably about $250-300 a month (USD equivalent, in rupees) in that area. That would be a good wage compared to construction work or farm work in that region. With some basic equipment like…

Quoting the Wikipedia page cited above: > It required one litre of water to clean, each of 400,000 installed panels. A total 15 days cleaning cycle required, 124 million litres of water enough to sustain 9000 people, while rain in Cholistan desert is rare and far between. Providing such huge amount of water in desert terrain, became a challenging and daunting task for management team. Besides, the manual cleaning met…

You can a have a quadcopter drone clean every panel with a soft brush/microfiber cloth and return to base at recharging station and repeat.

Have a swarm of these and cleaning will not be an issue.

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

#265

Post by taneq »

smeeth wrote: post #235
svara wrote: post #24

I've been diving into this literature a bit recently, and it's been mostly encouraging. Affordable clean energy is realistic. Clean energy sources are typically the cheapest sources of energy [0]. The intermittent production issue is solvable: At ~150 $/kWh storage, a combination of storage and renewables is the cheapest energy source 95% of the time [1]. The cost of different energy storage methods is coming down ex…

A little Its a little disheartening that current Lithium-Ion battery storage is at ~$350/kWh and is only projected to hit ~$150/kWh in 2050 [0]. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf

$350/kWh is still ridiculously cheap. You could build a good off-grid battery system for $7000 or so, which for many people would pay itself off in a few years.

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

#266

Post by peroporque »

mongol wrote: post #132
atombender wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this diagram from Volkswagen visualizing the energy loss at every step for hydrogen versus BEV: https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/hydrogen-vs-electric--volksw... This image (don't know the source), which includes oil and coal, is also a good visualization: https://i.imgur.com/Wuhnlvu.png Even simpler: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPkaz0nX4AAcr_v.jpg

I would like to have seen more elaboration on transmission losses in the power grid. For example, if we imagine solar cells in Sahara generating energy for Europe, is power grid transmission feasible or does hydrogen look better in comparison?

That's what DeserTec planned to do some time ago. Power line transmission would be possible, but political situations were too unstable, so the project for canceled.

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

#267

Post by sho »

Jedd wrote: post #223
dmix wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read about a couple of solar projects that projected x/kWh and turned out to be much worse in production. Pakistan's big deployment is one example, it was planned to be 100MW but only produced 18MW. Mostly because they didn't factor in the dust that would cover the panels, keeping them clean was very expensive (I'm curious how this applies to other proposed desert deployments). Nor factoring in the typical malai…

> Pakistan's big deployment is one example .. A valid example of what can go wrong when you pick the wrong technology, don't do small scale trials first, and rely on government oversight. (Refer the Background & Operation section of the wikipedia article -- toe-curlingly alarming, yet ultimately unsurprising.) They almost definitely should have pursued concentrated solar thermal. It partly solves the 'storage problem…

> what can go wrong when you [..] rely on government oversight > this sounds like a traditional government project problem

I don't know why you're trying to turn this into an "obviously govt can't do anything" point. There are plenty of very well-run governments who would have ably foreseen and solved these problems. And no doubt there's any number of private companies who would have screwed up just as badly.

Trying to tar the entire idea of government with Pakistan's performance is pretty bad faith IMO.

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

#268

Post by WalterBright »

svara wrote: post #75
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 frequen…

I thought hydrogen was very difficult to store long term because it leaks through most anything.

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

#269

Post by WalterBright »

manfredo wrote: post #151
nicoburns wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need long-term storage? Wouldn't it be cheaper just to overprovision production?

Seasonal fluctuations in energy production are more extreme in far northern and southern latitudes. Which just so happens to be where the majority of energy consumption is located. The amount of energy storage required even to just handle the daily duck curve is staggering. To put this in perspective, the US consumed 11.5TWh of electricity daily. Global lithium ion battery production is 300GWh per year. Until some tr…

I recall a 60 Minutes episode where someone was making batteries using dirt and seawater. The batteries were big and heavy, entirely unsuitable for a car. But for grid storage, big and heavy means nothing.
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