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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?

#391

Post by pfdietz »

rocqua wrote: post #347
Retric wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many batteries actually last significantly longer than common hydrogen storage tanks, hydrogen embrittlement is a major issue. Type III and IV tanks have a life cycle of 10 years. https://www.awoe.net/Hydrogen-Storage-LCA.html Hydrogen has also terrible volumetric energy density. It’s also really heavy until you scale to huge tanks.

How expensive, big, and heavy would a hydrogen tank (farm) be if it had to supply a whole winter for, say, 1million people. I ask because one of the bigger transition issues I see in Europe is load shifting from summer surplus to winter deficits, specifically for heating.

On such a scale hydrogen would be store underground in solution-mined salt caverns, not above ground in tanks.

Europe has enough salt formations to potentially store millions of GWh of hydrogen, far more than would be needed.

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

#392

Post by pfdietz »

wordofx wrote: post #286
xbmcuser wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people miss the fact that China did not get to electric out of the blue it invested heavily in all these techs Hydrogen, Nuclear, Wind, Solar and batteries the cheapest and easiest to scale turned out to be Solar, Wind and then batteries. Even today China is still building more hydrogen and nuclear plants than most of the world combined but those technologies have not scaled or gotten cheaper at the…

That must be why China is building so much nuclear power.

They are building far more renewables than nuclear.

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

#393

Post by [deleted] »

lesuorac wrote: post #368
chrisco255 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales figures for this "popular" car: 1997 (Gen I): 660 units 1999 (Gen II): 457 units

Those aren't really "sales" numbers (tbh I'm not even sure GM "sold" any car either given that it was able to destroy all of them). GM only produced 660 units and 457 units. They never tried to actually mass produce the car and seeing how current electric vehicles are I really understand why; why cannibalize your higher margin ICE vehicles? This is basically the same argument people make about a cure for cancer. Sinc…

[deleted]

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

#394

Post by SoftTalker »

AlexandrB wrote: post #373
MayeulC wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are common terms. A random link: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/07/clean-energy-green-h... * Green: produced from surplus renewable capacity (electrolysis) * Black, brown, grey: convert various fossil fuels to hydrogen via steam reforming. Basically strip carbon from hydrocarbons, emitting a lot of CO2. * Blue: same as black/brown/Greg but with carbon capture. There are other (less common) shades as well.

And Green is a huge efficiency loss. I suppose if the energy used to do it truly "green" and "surplus"... > As of 2022, commercial electrolysis requires around 53 kWh of electricity to produce one kg of hydrogen, which holds 39.4 kWh (HHV) of energy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water

When the energy is free (solar) efficiency doesn't matter, or at least not nearly as much.

Same reason the mob could sell their hijacked goods under wholesale prices... it was all profit no matter what.

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

#395

Post by tremon »

originalvichy wrote: post #294
belorn wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last decades' worth of German administrations (and EU countries in general) removed nuclear on the promise of a cheap grid made from green hydrogen and renewables. What they delivered was a EU grid dependent on imported natural gas and a record high ~€400 billions energy subsidies. It is hard to see whose promise of a bright future seems most realistic.

Germany is not the same as other countries. They have a culturally different view towards nuclear power.

Germany is not unique either. Both France and Belgium are struggling with their inventory of nuclear power plants: many are operating near or past their designed lifespans, so maintenance is getting more expensive but they can't be decommissioned because there are no replacement plants (and due to electric transportation, demand is only going up). Germany definitely made the wrong choice, but at least they were aware enough to make an explicit choice. Other European countries have basically been burying their head in the sand on the same issue.

As of today, France is looking to start construction on six new plants but that still means the plants likely won't be in operation until 2040. And Belgium hasn't even started the planning phase. That's 15 more years of operating nuclear power plants designed in the mid 1900s.

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

#396

Post by pfdietz »

Retric wrote: post #253
Guthur wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell are you talking about, a. batteries weren't mentioned and b. hydrogen is on the periodic table and exists as an element, and can actually be found in its pure form.

Pure hydrogen is not found in meaningful quantities on earth. There’s a huge demand for hydrogen in industry and it’s almost exclusively met with steam methane reforming there’s some methane pyrolysis and a little green hydrogen but not much. If people could just drill for it, they would happier do so as being so light it’s easy to separate out from other gasses.

> Pure hydrogen is not found in meaningful quantities on earth.

This is not necessarily true. A recent discovery in France could contain as much as 250 million metric tons of hydrogen (but that's a generous upper bound).

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

#397

Post by Beijinger »

This is propaganda. I can find you a dozen websites and statements from University professors, why gas, electricity or hydrogen is doomed from the beginning. And I can find another dozen, why they are the future.

"stuck with 19 buses that they have to drive a long way to refuel at great overall expense, something I wrote about this week."

This seems like a problem that can be solved, but it is a hen and egg problem. Not enough refusing options, system less attractive. Electric cars had this too.

I wonder why city buses have this problem. I am not aware that city buses use regular gas station, I always assumed that they get refilled in their "home base". This would make the refueling infrastructure not very challenging.

Is hydrogen the future for cars? Manufacturers haven’t given up on it yet https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/is-hydrogen-the-future-f...

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

#398

Post by nine_k »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stop-start nature of city busses makes them a real low hanging fruit for battery electrification, benefiting from instant torque to start and regen to stop and, as you say, fixed known routes within larger fleets. The only nation that seems to have capitalised on this basic fact is China which bootstrapped its EV industry on busses, pulling ahead from 2010 and hitting 90% of global market share for EV busses in 2…

For the same reason the electric mail trucks are a good idea. You can probably expect UPS and FedEx to start replacing their fleets over time as the existing vehicles age out, now that all electric vans are starting to become available.

I'd say 95% of Amazon delivery vehicles I see in NYC are the electric type. Amazon are known to be really concerned with the bottom-line efficiency, so I suppose it must make clear economic sense.

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

#399

Post by nine_k »

jimnotgym wrote: post #282
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason the electric mail trucks are a good idea. You can probably expect UPS and FedEx to start replacing their fleets over time as the existing vehicles age out, now that all electric vans are starting to become available.

Where I live a parcel delivery round can be hundreds of miles, so let's not over generalise

But most deliveries take place in cities and in suburban areas, just because more people live there.

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

#400

Post by mistrial9 »

belorn wrote: post #336
kergonath wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy used to be similar (though they have seemed to be softening their stance recently). Austria is even more anti-nuclear than Germany ever was.

Sweden was also on the same german track, shutdown some of the nuclear fleet, but is now going back and forth on the issue. They are also investing in new natural gas fueled thermal plants, with similar "future" plans of using green hydrogen. The national debate in Sweden is also similar. The right is arguing that the future is nuclear, and the left is arguing that green hydrogen is the future and natural gas is the…

except that there are more than two possibilities, but the debate is reduced to artificial Left and Right -- a miniature copy of the American political duopoly
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