Why is California wasting millions on hydrogen fuel pumps?
canarymedia.com
canarymedia.com
For comparison, it has cost Tesla ~$600 million to build out its global supercharger network.
You can look at hydrogen almost as a propane replacement as well.
Nuclear to hydrogen is workable and the way I'm imagining it going. There's also options to create hydrocarbons from air using the heat of a reactor.
And claiming that hydrogen doesnt need much development is an insane claim given the money put in and the total lack of success.
Not everything is a consumer car and truck. Being a battery maximalist prolongs the time everything else runs on dead dinosaurs.
Emergency vehicles of most types don't need that however. And in many of the cases you mention swappable battery packs are an option as well.
But we have to realize that compared to all consumer and fleet cars, 99% of all trucking is the vast majority of fuel use in transportation.
Extreme long range trucking is the exception.
In most cases you would make the hydrogen into methanol and you can keep mostly the same engines.
It makes indeed more sense to just use renewable gasoline, e.g. using the Fischer-Tropsch process like VW's eFuel.
Yep, BEV are great for commuting, but very difficult to use if you need to travel long distances in remote areas or tow a caravan or trailer.
Long distances are no problem unless you you are traversing unpopulated area free of infrastructure, and that is likely 0.000001% of all driving.
That's exactly it, but maybe not in the way you meant.
Industries want to push hydrogen because the most economical way to produce it is by using fossil fuels. So they can pretend they are 'green' while keeping business as usual.
This is not the case, at least over here in Australia. Whenever hydrogen is mentioned as a fuel, it is implicitly Green Hydrogen. It only became necessary to explicitly start saying Green Hydrogen after the fossil fuel spokespeople were using existing production to belittle green initiatives and pilots.
The actual reason hydrogen is being pushed here is because of what happens when you shut down large, centralized coal power plants and shut down coal mining capacity. You end up with rural towns with no jobs, or in the eyes of a politician an electoral district who isn't going to vote for them. Hydrogen means big solar and wind farms connected to hydrogen plants and jobs and votes linked to those jobs, and you can guess where they are going to be built. The elephant in the room is who is going to buy all this hydrogen when in most cases it seems batteries are the better choice for consumers.
Not much development except for developing generation capacity that doesn't exist (and electrolysis is wildly inefficient, by the way), a distribution chain that doesn't exist, familiarizing everyone from consumers to service staff with a fuel system unlike anything they've used before (CNG only ever took off in mass transit, and only to a limited degree), and oh by the way, it's centered around a gas that is so prone to leaking it leaks through metals and embrittles them in the process.
I can plug in an EV into the wall in my garage and charge it every night without a single change to my house. An L2 charger installation is an hour or two's work for an electrician.
https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/FR-1996-06-26/96-16205
Right now the lack of standardization of high pressure, high flow rate pumps for large trucks is a problem that Nikola is working very hard to solve. The pumps that are standardized and in use right now are a major bottleneck.
https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/nrel-research-fuelin...
Of course, this is a future thing, not a now thing.
Visual a bus that picks you up at its regular stops, but when it enters the highway of uses a long stretch of overhead wire to use nil battery.
You get the benefits of scale and flexibility of a bus, but at a reduced cost than train infrastructure while still moving many, many more people than a car.
What gives you this impression? What happens to the tens of millions of people who live in suburbia? What happens for those who enjoy living in suburbia?
If EVs really take off and we start to see gas stations shutting down, it would be nice to have the infrastructure already in place to keep fire trucks and ambulances rolling.
If you need a backup plan, then a regular gas station and perhaps hybrid emergency fire trucks seems to make more sense. Since all the infrastructure is available for that right now.
Liquid fuel (hydrogen, gasoline, etc) is essential. So as EVs take over and gas stations shut down, we either need to provide government subsidies to keep some gas stations operational, or invest in a clean alternative.
In short we're approaching things from the wrong end IMO, burning more fossil fuels for energy generation and moving things that need power density and quick refueling to slow, heavy batteries.
Truckers have legally mandated breaks that largely mitigates charging time.
Charging infrastructure is cheaper than hydrogen infrastructure.
The amount of land saved from this alone would be huge. Trains are also just way more energy efficient
All the more reason to tax what you don't want and not subsidize specific solutions. The government should focus on the problem, not on specific solutions to the problem.
Because politically deciding what should succeed is not science. Politicians may not even be aware of a better solution. Or it may not be lobbied as hard as poorer solutions.
In the consumers got tax benefits only for the first 250k cars. Tesla blew past that many,many years ago and it didnt stop their growth in the least.
And clean air credits would count for Hydrogen vehicles too.
BEV won because its quite simply far better almost any way you look at it. Fiancial, infrastruce , conviniance, mass production and so on. And its not even close.
The market values many dimensions, not just a few considerations or what someone decides is "science". Like switching costs. Or failure to get the product into people's hands, even if it is better.
Even setting the price too high matters. Or setting it too low to pay the bills.
And many other things. Including the preferences of millions of people.
A scientist couldn't design an experiment that replicates what the market already is.
I think a more relevant issue is hydrogen embrittlement, it is definitely a problem for many alloys. I don’t think it’s a show stopper for fuel cells though, and it’s an important research topic that’s been worked on a long time
Long term I expect we'll primarily use nuclear and renewable power plants on shore to drive manufacturing of synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels for marine and aviation markets. That appears to be the safest option and won't require rebuilding entire major industries.
So if refueling time isn't as big a deal as it was 5-10 years ago, and will be even less of an issue in another 5-10, Hydrogen starts to look pretty lousy actually. For those who own BEV's, having to stop at some point in your day to go to a fuel station feels archaic. Home charging is a game changer.
In the SE united states, our Power Companies are actively partnering with our Gas Stations to add chargers.
(this is in addition to Tesla's massive Super Charger network that gets people from coast to coast, generic charges installed at state parks, and local and federal tax benefits to install chargers)
Taxis are already solved via Uber and so it's likely that people are already interested in buying EVs and that's no different for Uber drivers.
Delivery vehicles are often carrying only so much cargo and so it's likely the single night charge can handle everything. Mountain deliveries may see problems if we don't have a liquid fuel however.
Of course that requires some coordination from the same kind of entity that is apparently wasting money already on energy transportation and storage.
Definitely, lithium ion batteries make the most sense for sedans. But for cross-country trucks, trains, and maritime shipping hydrogen has greater potential. You're not crossing the pacific on a battery powered cargo-ship.
On your list of things where hydrogen has potential, "trains" has got to surely be typo?
I suspect the answer for this niche is probably synthetic diesel though, as with synthetic jet fuel. If you already have the hydrogen, fixing it to some carbon is a relatively simple additional step.
Now the GP comment makes sense. I am certainly surprised but at least now it makes some sense.
And yes. Electrified rail for freight is seen in small pockets in Western and Central Europe, even smaller pockets of North America [1]. It is widely used on the major lines in Russia and the majority of freight is electric. India has some electric freight. As does China, and the Chinese government has announced a project to, eventually, electrify all their freight lines.
Hydrogen gas has the best energy density per unit of mass of any chemical fuel source (nuclear blows it out of the water, mind you), and could prove to be the best option for decarbonizing freight trains.
1, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#/media/File:Ene...
The efficiency of hydrogen electrolysis seems low, but potentially not an issue if the absolute cost of wind/solar continues to drop - and it's a storage solution for smoothing renewable production too.
This is underappreciated.
https://piperepair.co.uk/2020/08/04/pipe-replacements-to-cut...
Why are heat pumps not plausible? You can get them today.
https://piperepair.co.uk/2020/08/04/pipe-replacements-to-cut...
Aside from the cost (which might come down), heat pumps have some inherent disadvantages - reliance on insulation, and slow ramp up time. So no more opening the windows at night for fresh air, then getting the house back up to temperature in the morning.
Random note: I'm all for heat pumps & all for hydrogen. They just aren't for the same use cases. Heat pumps are good for heating+cooling of spaces. Hydrogen is good way to store electricity when care about energy-to-weight and/or need quick fuelling.
Despite this blurb, I still believe the primary use for hydrogen will be in trucking not in cars. Further more, there are times when some turbines in a wind farm are turned off because consumption has met demand. We could keep those going full time and just convert excess to hydrogen.
My friend just bought a fuel cell car. Between the tax incentives, tax rebates, dealer incentives, and $15,000 fuel card, the car is almost free.
This is simply not true. The DOE produced a report several years ago demonstrating that 70% of light vehicles could be electrified immediately and existing electrical generation capacity would be sufficient. As that scenario is impossible, the growth of EVs in lockstep with the rapid uptake in renewables (and natural gas/batteries to a lesser degree) ensures that there will be no generation shortfall. A more recent citation is provided below.
https://www.virta.global/blog/myth-buster-electric-vehicles-...
Generation isn't the problem it's moving it from where it's generated to where it is needed.
These circuits are the same size as a large heat pump or induction stove, and vehicle charging can be orchestrated in the same way Nest thermostats are used to shed HVAC loads in order to sidestep infrastructure constraints (“DER” or distributed energy resources).
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-01/california...
More accurately, we in California decided that "flex alerts", planned blackouts, and closing plants are the right approaches to our energy infrastructure.
I agree that our grid wouldn't support everyone having electric cars, but why do I get the feeling that it could and should?
I have heard wise-guy finance say with a knowing look, that the "electrical infrastructure will be redesigned, and redesigned again." I believe them because, there is money to be made at each step. Repair of the forests and streams are the poverty work, not new electrical grid configurations, in California.
It is not the right time to throw the solid parts of the grid under the bus, and downplay the functional parts of the past, while pining for the workable future. A plea here (including present writer) to investigate and use fact-based analysis.
I'm on Silicon Valley Power. None of those issues apply. PG&E needs more than a slap in the wrist.
Quick chart here:
https://www.volkswagenag.com/content/dam/online-kommunikatio...
So with a hydrogen car you waste half your input electricity. For a gain in faster refueling?
No they have not. There's a couple billion ICE cars on the road. They'll have "won" when EVs far outstrip ICE engines.
How big is a Model 3 battery pack again?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai#/media/File:Toyot...
You can of course fearmonger on any topic: in any gasoline car on the market today, your back seat passengers are sitting on a huge quantity of highly flammable liquid! And it is stored in just a regular plastic container!
In fact, the Mirai only has 600 MJ of energy stored in its fuel tank, while a gasoline car has around 2200 MJ! And a gasoline leak will pool around the car, while a hydrogen leak will go safely away up into the air due to buoyancy!
Yet nobody bats an eye at the gasoline car. We engineer our cars such that fuel tank rupture is extremely unlikely in even severe accidents, with redundant safety systems all around.
Unfortunately a lot of the battery capacity gains of the last 15 years have resulted from loosening these tolerances for fire/explosion, I'm thinking about lithium-ion and lithium-polymer chemistry here. Lithium-iron-phosphate is an example of a safer chemistry, but it also has significantly lower energy density, it's probably still better than NiMH but not anywhere near as much as lithium-ion or polymer types.
That means that if you are looking at an iso-safety sense, the gains have been much slower than "maximum potential even if you are ok with batteries exploding when overcharged/overloaded/punctured". We have just been ramping up our tolerance for batteries of the latter type.
hydrogen makes no sense, it's basically free and abundant, the lazy people can't profit from it easily, therefore it'll die
Research is never the optimal strategy in the short term but it pays off in the long term. Every once in a while we get a lemon, but it's the cost of doing science.
It's always about, this is the newest invention, this is an electric car, this is the good things that is said about it, but nothing about the hell you are in when it comes to charge your car or what you pay for it.
This is why I never get into a, oh you are better off getting an electric car because it is good for the environment discussion without them understanding that you are generating electricity the best way using fuels, it's so stupid, it's bad.