Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

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Is it a solved problem in relation to hydrogen vehicle refueling?

In theory, yes, we can pressurise things very very fast. It does cost money and space (larger tanks), which makes it impractical for everyday solutions.

I still don't get how hydrogen can be cheaper than electricity, since creating green hydrogen via electrolysis takes around 4-5 times more electricity than it can actually produce. Blue/grey hydrogen is just natural gas, which doesn't make it any more environmentally friendly than just running a straght-up CNG car.

In my country the electricity price could quadruple and it's still cheaper than gasoline or diesel. The closest H2 refueling point is in a neighbouring country. And no one is rushing to put up a comprehensive network of $2 million a pop H2 stations.

An example from Sweden: https://www.h2euro.org/whats-h2appening/sweden-more-than-tri...

News from 2017 about how Sweden will TRIPLE their number of H2 stations from 4 to 12 by 2020!

It's now 2021, almost 2022 and the number of stations is... still four.

(Meanwhile a single supermarket chain in Finland has opened 222 new charging points during Q2-Q4/2021)

This is a huge chicken and egg problem. Someone needs to front up truckloads of cash and bureaucracy fighting time to put up a comprehensive network before regular people will shell up cash for H2 vehicles.

Large tanks do not cost that much. It will be no worse than compressed natural gas. This entire argument is an imaginary one with very little reasoning backing it up.

The argument that hydrogen is inefficient is itself a massive exaggeration. Fuel cells are more efficient than anything except batteries, and come with the upside of much less weight and resource requirements. For hydrogen to be cheaper than electricity, all it needs is an infrastructure that is moderately cheaper than the grid, as energy costs are only a minor portion of the total cost. It is not even that far off as cost per mile between EVs and hydrogen cars is around 50-75% in most places. Fuel cell cars are cheaper than diesel cars now in many countries, and will get cheaper as hydrogen infrastructure expands.

I don't know where you come from, but electricity costs has skyrocketed in countries that are trying to switch to renewable energy, and still going up by 10-20% annually. The low cost of electricity was entirely due to cheap existing sources, mainly coal or natural gas, with some regions with hydro or nuclear. Take away the reliable and dispatchable power generate and the grid becomes a nightmare of unpredictable power. In fact you need hydrogen to balance out the grid and make it stable. In all likelihood electricity will be expensive enough such that EVs no longer have any kind of cost advantage. Especially if they start to tax EVs like they tax other cars.

A lot of that is due to a lack of investment. As countries fall into the battery fad while ignoring real green energy (like nuclear), green policy in a lot of countries have become a joke. Sweden is an example of this as they are shutting down their nuclear power. They will use coal or natural gas as a replacement. EVs will actually get more polluting and not less. Although Sweden has ignored hydrogen for the last 5 years, they will have no choice but to invest billions in hydrogen now because they have other path to zero emissions.

The biggest event in green energy investment is the massive surge in hydrogen investment: https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/hydrogen-project-ann...

It's pretty obvious that the world is moving past batteries in the same way it moved past previous obsolete green ideas like biofuels or diesel engines.

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