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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

Not sure what the obsession with hydrogen is about. It's inefficient to produce and difficult to store.

But it's essential to de-carbonization. Hydrogen isn't just about fuels, it's about making fertilizers (ammonia), steel, e-fuels, etc.

Obviously, as an energy carrier, you'd use batteries whenever possible. But there are many places where we'd need hydrogen, or fuels made with the help of hydrogen, to get the necessary energy density.

Hydrogen ferries and trains are in service, or being put into service, right now. If batteries was a viable, cheaper alternative in those specific cases, it would have been used. It's obviously not that hard to store. Norway has both battery and hydrogen ferries, what's used depends on the required range.

That said, a hydrogen gas station exploded near me, so yeah. There's definitely challenges, and it shouldn't be used where it doesn't make sense.

> That said, a hydrogen gas station exploded near me, so yeah. There's definitely challenges, and it shouldn't be used where it doesn't make sense.

Why did this happen, out of curiosity? Do you have a linked source?

I'm wondering if there is a big asterisks next to that "Hydrogen is cheaper* than batteries in these use cases"

*when hydrogen is sourced from fossil fuels and/or fossil fuel powered generation

This has been a good resource re: what h2 is useful for, and what is hype: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...

So, here in Spain, electric cars can't be the solution for the vehicles and having hydrogen cars would certainly be the way to go, it seems.

We can use already built infrastructure and we don't need a charger on every single street.

In Spain, 70% of the vehicles stays on the street overnight[1], that means a charger every roughly 10 meters. Imagine the amount of copper necessary to cover that.

Here's a study in Valencia to install electric chargers on 3 streets. It's going to cost 200k€. https://contrataciondelestado.es/wps/wcm/connect/761db8fc-9a...

[1]: https://www.lavanguardia.com/motor/20211027/7818499/dudas-co....

> In Spain, 70% of the vehicles stays on the street overnight[1], that means a charger every roughly 10 meters. Imagine the amount of copper necessary to cover that.

Not every single one of these cars needs to be charged all the time - and in any case, most people drive short enough distances that they can be charged at a simple 230V outlet over night, which means it would be enough to add outlets to existing street lights. Alternatively, employers, shopping malls etc. can provide charging opportunities in the exact same way. The only place where high-power chargers are needed is for people commuting long distances.

In any case, the goal should be to take as much individual car traffic off the streets as possible by providing usable and affordable mass transit as well as usable bike infrastructure.

> that means a charger every roughly 10 meters. Imagine the amount of copper necessary to cover that.

I can imagine streetlights existing so it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch from there

On one side of my street there are 4 streetlights and 16 cars parked almost at all times (At least from September to July, the only time you can find a parking space is early morning).

Would that be enough? The streetlights are LED so I don't think they use too much electricity to justify a massive cable that could charge 16 cars

Likely when built the streetlights weren't LED, so the buried cables are under-capacity. Assuming they can provide 230v power at 15-20 amps, that's enough to fully charge something like a Tesla or Chevy bolt (250-300 mile range) overnight.

Most people could do fine with charging only 1 out of every 4 nights for regular commuting, the tricky part is just figuring out how to make that work logistically, but it is at least feasible. Those with schedules that allow charging during the day make things easier I'd assume.

Of course they're under capacity, but it's not that expensive to replace and upgrade the cables to be able to support a couple standard car charger sockets - just do it when someone else rips up the road anyway.

Even crazier, there was a time where someone proposed running at least one copper pair to every home just so people could talk to each other over long distances. Two wires per home! That's impossible.

I agree that the goal needs to take car traffic off the streets, that would be the dream. I don't own a car and I don't plan to do so because on my city I can pretty much do anything I need to without it.

I wish it was as straightforward as adding 2 outlets on each street light pole but the government will still need to charge people for using it and well, if each pole could charge 4 vehicles at the same time, it could even work on my street.

> Not every single one of these cars needs to be charged all the time - and in any case, most people drive short enough distances that they can be charged at a simple 230V outlet over night, which means it would be enough to add outlets to existing street lights.

The what now ? There are way more cars than street lights and most people do not park in range of one (with reasonably long cable).

And I am absolutely sure unplugging people's car would become favourite teenager past-time anyway...

  > In Spain, 70% of the vehicles stays on the street overnight[1], that means a charger every roughly 10 meters. Imagine the amount of copper necessary to cover that.

Imagine how much copper would be needed to supply electricity to every house!

If Spain happens to already have a system that supplies electricity to every house in place, then the amount of copper needed to string some up to the road would cost less that the price delta between petrol and electricity in most places after a single month of electric vehicle use. I know because I've strung copper from my home to my parking space, three phase, and I did it for financial reasons.

I love the reasons that people invent to try to oppose electric vehicles. Think of the copper!

I'm not opposing electric vehicles, I'm just trying to show a different reality here.

In Spain you need a permit for almost anything and one of the reasons we don't have more chargers is just because of bureaucracy.

Right now, if I had a car and it was electric, the only option I would have to charge it is running an extension cord from my balcony to the car (Supposing I parked right in front of my apartment).

This is a real challenge and I wish the government would focus on the infra needed to: Assemble batteries in the country, create more and more charging points (As I said before, 3 streets had a cost of 200k€, and they are not even covered completely) and remove taxes from electric vehicles. I think that's what works but here they chose to make life difficult for everyone with a gasoline-powered vehicle.

At least the government is investing in public transport

So it's not the copper, but the bureaucracy then?

Could that maybe be fixed by the political will that Putin is creating all over Europe?

  > In Spain you need a permit for almost anything and one of the reasons
  > we don't have more chargers is just because of bureaucracy.

So it's a political problem, not a financial problem. Then why mention the price of copper?

Just wait a few years when photovoltaic roofs will become the standard. Cars seem to get driven 10000km/year on average in Spain, which is around 27km/day which is doable with solar car roofs. I guess especially for people living in cities it should be less.

It's cheaper to store in bulk than batteries (so far). And there are a variety of methods that almost-work to make it denser volume wise.

The appeal is mass energy density, making it work is so far mostly elusive.

I think it makes more sense to use than batteries at like wind turbines to store excess energy.

looks like 80% efficiency for electrolysis weight of storage wouldn't be a huge factor for non moving applications

Few companies are working on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGe8R0N20ps

The article is specifically about an efficient process to produce it at point of use, so it need not be stored.

The first paragraph contradicts you:

>is the most promising energy carrier of the low-carbon economy.

^_ energy carrier != production at the point of use.

The article seems to be about dealing with a supposed shortage of fresh water to make the hydrogen from. If this is solved it changes nothing.

The authors' speculations on how hydrogen may be used are irrelevant to the substantive content of the article. There is no shadow of doubt about whether hydrogen production will be massively important in the immediate future, so better ways to make it are equally as important.

Please edit swipes out of your comments here. This comment would be just fine without that last bit.

Edit: We've had to ask you this kind of thing many times before. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? I don't want to ban you, because your substantive comments are great, but this is not ok:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30890352 (April 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26290876 (Feb 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22199357 (Jan 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087086 (Jan 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799929 (Dec 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21709427 (Dec 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667970 (Nov 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20257959 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20188474 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20112003 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945156 (May 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19334737 (March 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19334734 (March 2019)

Done.

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