Hydrogen production is almost entirely produced from fossil fuels currently. Its not really a low carbon energy source unless electrolysis can be made much more efficient.
Its a shame this article didn't examine the production side of hydrogen.
Its a shame this article didn't examine the production side of hydrogen.
I saw this article earlier today along those lines: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/alchemy-of...
Supposedly this stores hydrogen metal hydrides cheaper than lithium batteries, whatever that means, but I'm not qualified to judge.
[1] https://www.jacobs.com/sites/default/files/2020-06/jacobs-ya...
The lower the energy used by a generator, the higher its efficiency would be; a 100%-efficient electrolyser would consume 39.4 kilowatt-hours per kilogram (142 MJ/kg) of hydrogen,[24] 12,749 joules per litre (12.75 MJ/m3). Practical electrolysis (using a rotating electrolyser at 15 bar pressure) may consume 50 kW⋅h/kg (180 MJ/kg), and a further 15 kW⋅h (54 MJ) if the hydrogen is compressed for use in hydrogen cars.
It's not great, but it doesn't seem unworkable. I can't read the article, but isn't the idea to use hydrogen tanks as a battery to smooth out the variability of renewables like solar?
[1] While Tesla’s V3 Superchargers are amazing in that charging stops can now be as short as 10-15 minutes to for 100+ miles of range - Superchargers should not be used for day-to-day charging because it wears out the battery too much (hence the hype over the new generation of Lithium cells, that “million-mile battery”, but for the rest of us using current-gen Lithium batteries (myself included, I drive a Tesla too) I don’t want to have to drop $20k+ for an out-of-warranty battery replacement).