Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cleantechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 503 posts

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

#411

Post by timschmidt »

chrisco255 wrote: post #337
timschmidt wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a car engineered to satisfy California's short lived requirement for auto manufacturers to make a zero emissions vehicle, hence the availability. Despite that, drivers loved it, and didn't want to give them back when GM cancelled the program (after lobbying the law repealed).

The car was engineered with 90s battery tech so it was plagued with problems that anyone who used such batteries in the 90s know existed: high self-discharge, memory effect, low energy density, voltage depression over time, and limited cycle life. These cars wouldn't last 2 years without needing their batteries replaced. That's why they never sold more than 600 of them.

And? I own an EV Pickup which originally ran on lead acid. It was a great truck then, and it's still a great truck today with LiFePo4.

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

#412

Post by happosai »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #23

Because people are allergic to hybrids and I don't know why "Electric is short range, fuel is expensive, guess I have to pick one" The ideal drivetrain was invented over 20 years ago by Toyota and apparently nobody but me and Honda noticed it!

Nothing ideal in a drivetrain that requires climate change accelerating fossil fuels to work.

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

#413

Post by Loudergood »

wisty wrote: post #379
AlexandrB wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

20% loss isn't really "huge", is it? 10% of power is lost to distribution anyway. Batteries can also lose 10%. The issue with hydrogen isn't producing it, it's that it's an absolute nightmare to transport and store. Hydrogen can soak into metals, causing them to become brittle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement and it leaks if there's absolutely any chance of it possibly leaking (thanks to the sma…

Ok now added hydrogen losses due to distribution and storage.

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

#414

Post by happosai »

jimnotgym wrote: post #292

How much power does it take to charge a bus in a reasonable amount of time? I heard 100kw. If I have 100 buses charging overnight at 100kw I guess I need 10Mw grid connection? Is that an easy thing to get to a city bus depot in the US. In the UK I believe that would require moving to a location with a HV line and building a sub-station.

Dunno about US but globally this is really a "it depends" answer. In developed countries, there are plenty of former factories and power plants with strong HV power line connections. Long term, with the electrification of everything, locations in close location to HV lines become prime estate.

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

#415

Post by sologoub »

happosai wrote: post #405
dghughes wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My province has a hydrogen village powered by windmills no oil companies involved. https://frontierpowersystems.ca/hydrogen-village/

Where are all the details? All the articles of project seem to be pre-build. How many MW of wind turbines? How big electrolyzer? How big energy storage? Investment cost? Running costs? Reliability?

It’s a rather old project (2009), so many articles covering it are defunct. Found some of the info: “The purpose of the Prince Edward Island (PEI) Wind-Hydrogen Village is to use excess wind energy along with hydrogen technologies to offer sustainable energy. Excess electricity produced by wind turbines on the island is being used to power a 300kW uni-polar electrolyzer.

A uni-polar electrolyzer uses alkaline liquids, rather than solid polymer, as its electrolyte. The electrolyzer can produce about 6kg of hydrogen per hour. The hydrogen is then stored as compressed gas in storage tanks that have a total capacity of about 500kg. The hydrogen is then used in the bi-fuel hydrogen/diesel genset to power the village when there is no wind.”

Source: https://martinottaway.com/rhemmen/hydrogen-as-the-ultimate-f...

I guess it’s no fun covering things that just work. News need drama…

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

#416

Post by culi »

chrisco255 wrote: post #331
kergonath wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about electric cars wasn't "viable" in 2003? That was the year Toyota released their all electric RAV4 in California Musk was very effective in pushing the narrative that there was nothing before Tesla.

I was alive in 2003. There were no mass market electrics on the road. The RAV4 nickel-metal hydride plug-in hybrid from 97-03 sold a grand total of 1400 units. Nickel MH batteries were notorious for losing range quickly, having a memory if recharged frequently from only partial discharge, losing 20-50% of their charge per month on self-discharge alone, having far less energy density than lithium, only lasting for 500…

Tesla succeeded because heavy and intense government subsidies and investment into making electric cars a thing

The fact that an EV failed without that kind of publicly funded support is only evidence that furthers the point GP was making

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

#417

Post by pfdietz »

Retric wrote: post #408
pfdietz wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Sure there’s useful amounts of grey hydrogen but not enough for any kind of energy transition. We’re talking about the useful energy from ~1 number power plant over its lifespan. So find ~1,000 such locations and that would be a big deal.

This is white hydrogen, not grey hydrogen.

It's not clear what would be available globally if it were looked for as it was in France.

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

#418

Post by cavisne »

kergonath wrote: post #322
calibas wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about electric cars wasn't "viable" in 2003? That was the year Toyota released their all electric RAV4 in California... Unlike hydrogen, there was already whole highly-developed system for production and distribution of electricity. Also, you're mistaken about my "made up narrative". I'm not claiming electric cars were mass market, I'm strongly implying there were forces at work fighting against that very thing!

> What about electric cars wasn't "viable" in 2003? That was the year Toyota released their all electric RAV4 in California Musk was very effective in pushing the narrative that there was nothing before Tesla.

Tesla literally built the engine for that Rav4?

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

#419

Post by theshrike79 »

wisty wrote: post #379
AlexandrB wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

20% loss isn't really "huge", is it? 10% of power is lost to distribution anyway. Batteries can also lose 10%. The issue with hydrogen isn't producing it, it's that it's an absolute nightmare to transport and store. Hydrogen can soak into metals, causing them to become brittle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement and it leaks if there's absolutely any chance of it possibly leaking (thanks to the sma…

But then you have even more losses when you convert the hydrogen back to energy.

The formula is that 55kW of electricity used to generate hydrogen from water and then converted back to electricity in a gas turbine or fuel cell results in 15kW of energy.

That's a lot more than 20%.

Compare that to just storing the 55kW in batteries and using them to spin an electric engine. "Hydrogen economy" only makes sense if you have infinite free electricity or massive overproduction.

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

#420

Post by elric »

scojjac wrote: post #211
dalyons wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lines are very expensive to install and maintain. You could just buy double or triple the number of “silly” EV buses and be way ahead.

I addressed that. High price is an artificial problem caused primarily by red tape, from tariffs to environmental studies to rolling over to NIMBYs over neverending hearings. We had electric streetcars in small towns in the early 1900s in the US. Small towns in other countries have them today. Buses suck. People don't like riding them as much as trains and streetcars. Bus lines do not attract the same kind of investm…

IMO it's totally fine for buses to keep using ICE for many years to come. There are orders of magnitude fewer buses than cars, they are already pretty fuel efficient, and everything that makes public transport more expensive is very bad in my opinion.

If we had zero cars in a city, but 10k diesel buses, the city would still be better than if it had 100k cars and 500 electric buses. I'm making up these numbers, of course.

Point being: sure, electrify everything eventually, but let technology improve and let prices go down to the point that it makea sense for public transport.

Right now, an extra diesel bus would do more good than replacing a diesel bus with an electric one in many cities.

Post reply on HN