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Main points: 1. The only hydrogen produced from electricity is ecological. Carbon capture doesn’t work today. 2. The hydrogen from electricity is expensive, t
by jakozaur 6y ago
Main points:
1. The only hydrogen produced from electricity is ecological. Carbon capture doesn’t work today.
2. The hydrogen from electricity is expensive, though as wind and solar get exponential cheaper, we will end up with spikes excess cheap electricity (negative prices today or disconnecting plants). It makes sense to produce hydrogen during those spikes.
3. Cars on hydrogen don’t make sense at all. The massive cost of infrastructure plus batteries are superior and getting better on that front.
4. Hydrogen from electricity can replace the first reformation from natural gas.
5. Next promising use cases are industrial heating, such as steel production (instead of coal).
6. Least profitable, but still plausible, uses hydrogen as long-term energy storage and mixing it with natural gas.
7. I wonder whether generating hydrogen from seawater and getting back freshwater would improve the economics of this form of energy storage.
- harg 6y agoI don’t know if you had access to the whole article but it addresses all of the points you mention (except 7).
- maxerickson 6y ago1 kg of (electrically produced) hydrogen costs more than 1000 gallons of desal. (1 kg of hydrogen would make a few gallons of water)
- hwillis 6y agoedit: misinterpreted "desal" as diesel rather than desalinated water. Well that's just not at all true. Hydrogen by electrolysis costs <$20/kg. A much more interesting fact about a kg of hydrogen is also that it has very close to the same energy content as a gallon of diesel, and significantly more when used in a fuel cell vs an ICE. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/36734.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/36734.pdf
- maxerickson 6y ago1000 gallons of desalination costs $2 or $3. I was responding to point 7, not comparing hydrogen to diesel.
- hwillis 6y agoah, I thought you had misspelled.
- postingawayonhn 6y ago> It makes sense to produce hydrogen during those spikes. I'm not sure that it necessarily does. If you're only producing during those peak periods of electrical output then your you're going to have a lot of hydrogen producing equipment sitting idle at other times.