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Sp3llbind3r t1_iwr1si0 wrote

Reply to comment by reid0 in Overhyping hydrogen as a fuel risks endangering net-zero goals by filosoful

Not so sure about that. I think there is room for both.

Driving around 2.5 ton cars with huge batteries you normally use 5-20% of the capacity is also kind of stupid. Maybe a hybrid would be more intelligent. 50 - 100 miles for everday by battery and 500 miles + from hydrogen for travel.

Some people will be better of with electric, but other use cases call for other technologies.

You also got to take into account that we have to overbuild renewables by a lot. There will be more and more leftover energy that we cant use in that moment and need to store somewhere. That could be used to produce cheap hydrogen.

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Barrel_go_BRRR t1_iwrp77j wrote

Maybe the production cost of hydrogen through PtX might fall heavily when we have an abundance of renewable energy, but isn't the storage of it still quite expensive? The more we have of it, the more it's gonna cost to store? (Just a random thought/question)

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Sp3llbind3r t1_iwrwg2d wrote

Sure it costs, as i think you need pressurized steel tanks. But we also store a huge amount of lpg.

The question is what we will use it for?

On vehicles for longer distances especially trucks? Combined with a plugin battery for short distances?

Replacing LPG or coal in industrial applications?

Maybe for load balancing in power grids? I'm not sure about that one.

We also should not use it to replace gas or oil heating in places connected to the power grid. That is way better served with heat pumps powered from the grid.

I think hydrogen is suited to be produced decentralized. I don't know if we need that huge stores, as it could be produced more on demand.
And i think we will need way less hydrogen then fossil fuels.

And i don't think it will be this or that but multiple options to suit the use case most efficiently.

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bremidon t1_iwu0e83 wrote

>We also should not use it to replace gas or oil heating in places connected to the power grid. That is way better served with heat pumps powered from the grid.

Some of us are not so lucky. We would *love* to use a heat pump in our home, but it would mean gutting a 200+ year old house and replacing the entire heating system.

Not only is that expensive, but I would have to work out what the environmental cost of that renovation is (as well as tossing out perfectly fine components) compared to the savings of getting a heat pump.

Now, if I were able to simply modify the boiler, then things become a bunch easier to calculate.

So sure, new houses should definitely go with heat pumps. But there are millions of houses that simply cannot make this level of renovation without defeating the purpose. Hydrogen might be really good here.

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bremidon t1_iwtzia8 wrote

>Driving around 2.5 ton cars with huge batteries you normally use 5-20% of the capacity is also kind of stupid

Well, now you exchange a ton of batteries for a ton of hydrogen storage, motor, and all the tech you need to make the hydrogen work. And by your own scenario, you are dragging that around most of the time, when you don't actually need it. Also, don't forget all the tech you need to connect those two systems.

I currently have an SR+. We take it on long vacations and it's just fine for that.

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>You also got to take into account that we have to overbuild renewables by a lot.

I agree with this statement, but not the conclusion you make from it. Honestly, we have no idea what is going to have when we reach super power. This is simply not a situation we have ever had outside of very small, local, temporary scenarios.

It's not like the equipment to create that hydrogen is free to build or maintain. The question will be: is the stored hydrogen we get from it worth the construction and maintenance cost?

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rogerdanafox t1_iwr7w04 wrote

Or pumped hydro

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Sp3llbind3r t1_iws5gjd wrote

Sure, but unfortunately space for hydro is limited too. If you don‘t want to destroy your ecosystem in the mountains.

In Switzerland i think we produce about 60% of our power with hydro. But we build out most of the easy places and there are large hurdles to overcome. Be it construction effort / difficulty wise or in form of resistance against future projects.

I guess it‘s always a tradeoff.

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reid0 t1_iwsenbf wrote

Driving around a completely seperate, mostly unused engine in a hybrid, which doubles the complexity and maintenance of the vehicle is no more efficient than carrying battery weight. When the number 1 selling personal vehicle in the US (F150) weighs between 4,069-5,697lb, I think it’s fair to say that vehicle weight is not people’s primary concern.

People already have the option to choose lighter, shorter range EVs, but they tend to buy longer ranges due to range anxiety. As EV adoption continues however, a lot of people are realising that they don’t need the extra range and are buying shorter range EVs the second time round.

Combine that with improvements in battery density, improvements in charging speeds, and tech such as wireless charging, battery weights can and are going down.

It’s funny, the anti EV crew claim there’ll never be enough renewables and the pro Hydrogen crew claim there’ll be so much they we’ll have nothing better to do with it than make Hydrogen. In the meantime, rooftop solar and a home battery can cover most people’s energy needs while getting nowhere near what it would take to generate the equivalent amount of hydrogen.

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Sp3llbind3r t1_iwskah9 wrote

You know, put a small battery in a hydrogen car and make it plug-in or a fuelcell in an electric car.. Drive with the small battery in citys and with hydrogen is for the range anxiety..

I don't get pickups and SUV's at all. Maybe the streets get too bad because nobody with money pays taxes or something.

It will take a while with renewables. And you will have a huge amount of overproduction if you want to power your grid with solar, wind and water. Maybe we figure out better uses.

But the amount of batteries you want to produce is huge and an issue.

Just imagine a houshold with a f150, some kind of sedan and a home battery.

I guess charging whole parking decks of electric cars in citys is not without Challenges. At the Moment it looks like chargers outpace cars by a bit. But that might soon change. If you have to wait to charge somewhere, that gets tiresome soon. Charging at home is the obvious solution. But not that easy to implement in citys.

I'm by no means anti EV. But there are problems that we need to solve. And i don't think we need to replace fossil engines with a single Technology.

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