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Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

We can do load balancing on the grid, it's proven and old tech. Smart grids handle it easily and you don't need an unicorn startup to cycle the car chargers to balance the grid load.

We can use exactly zero of the current gas distribution system for hydrogen. Hydrogen molecules are literally the smallest in the universe, we haven't invented a container where they won't escape. You can't just pour hydrogen into a gas station tank or transport it in a natural gas pipe.

Transporting hydrogen will always result in huge losses. Less huge if you transport it as a liquid, but then you need to transport it at -252 Celsius - which brings a whole new set of problems.

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Transporting hydrogen is easier than transporting electricity on the large scale. A pipeline is both simpler and more scalable than wires after you get to a certain size.

I have three BEV chargers at my home now. i didnt need to change a thing to my “built in 2000 to code” home to do this, as it “came out of the box” w/ 200 amp service.

My chevy bolt will charge at 8a (conservative) or 12a (“fast”) at my preference. It takes maybe 3-4 hours over night to charge from my average driving day with a decent commute.

My car consumes, while charging for a few hours overnight, about the same amps as a good clothing iron or a beefy vacuum. If i wanted, i could delay charge so three EV charged overnight, never draeing power at the same time.

My next car will buffer power so solar cells can overcharge and supply back to the house. And it will be a backup power supply for storms and grid outages so I no longer need a standby generator.

Tell me again about how the grid isnt ready for my BEVs and why we should be pumping some liquid or gas into tanks?

For a charging outlet, electricity is arguably simpler. But that is not what I was talking about. I was referring to large scale distribution of energy. We're talking GWs and hundreds of miles here. In that case, it is easier to move around hydrogen.

It is the same reason why we have miles of natural gas pipelines sending NG to local NG turbines instead of a few big NG power plants with wires sending electricity everywhere.

Natural gas leaks from pipes, but it's "free" so we don't care.

Hydrogen we need to make using a resource intensive process, and it leaks from every single container ever made, because it's literally the smallest molecule in the universe. Hydrogen transport incurs so big losses that it's not feasible at a large scale [0].

To move an equal amount of energy, you need 4x many ships as LNG, because you lose 23% more during transport than LNG AND you need to transport it at -253C which is a whole another issue.

Hydrogen is a good energy storage medium, but it's not practical for transportation. It's a lot easier and cheaper to move the same amount of energy using the power grid.

The future of hydrogen is renewable energy storage, on location. Not transport.

[0] https://vimeo.com/761934482 (16:50 mark)

Neither natural gas nor hydrogen leaks in appreciable amounts in pipelines. They do care about profits, and leaky pipes lose money.

You do not need 4x as many ships. You just need bigger tanks. Hydrogen is much lighter than LNG. Bigger tanks are not an issue. You're hearing straw-engineer arguments from those with a vested interest to BS about these issues.

The video I linked to was "Michael Liebreich’s Keynote Speech at World Hydrogen Congress 2022"

Why would the World Hydrogen Congress have a "vested interest to BS"?

The speaker is comparing a LNG ship to a prototype Kawasaki LH2 ship, with actual values for both.

What he's suggesting is that we transport ammonia instead of LH2, ammonia is a lot more stable to transport and can be converted to hydrogen at the destination.

Michael Liebriech could easily have a vested interest to BS. In fact he probably does since he has made similar statements in the past.

Ammonia is an option too. But this does not preclude other ideas.

Pardon, what part of ‘a home with electrical service works just fine’ fails to fit your definition of ‘a large scale distribution of energy’.

We have an electrical power grid, dude. And it works just fine for home BEV charging.

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