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Europe’s First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Sea-Going Ferry Is Powered by Renewable Energy

57 points by mardiyah 5y ago

mr2loco 5y ago
love this one. We are making great steps towards a cleaner future
meepmorp 5y ago
> Orkney’s excess renewable energy could be used to produce hydrogen, which would then be stored under pressure and used to power local transport, such as a ferry fleet. Maybe not actually powered by renewable energy but potentially so.
- zejn 5y ago
  Orkney is known to have an abundance of community wind energy, which they are unable to export to Scotland due to cable capacity limitations. They're experimenting with H2 generation instead.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    There will be good reasons to produce NH3, as well. But that also needs H2. H2 is not a super-great long-term storage medium. NH3 is a good choice to use to fuel retrofitted transport shipping (which would just need new tankage and plumbing, not new engines) and to drive generators in places where solar is not practical much of the time, such as north of 55 degrees latitude.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      NH3 = Ammonia.
  - azornathogron 5y ago
    I wonder why they don't experiment with a bigger cable... Are grid interconnectors much more capital intensive or higher maintenance than Hydrogen generating plants? (Genuine question - I have no idea of the relative costs here)
dahfizz 5y ago
Does anyone have any good numbers on the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells vs batteries? Naively, I would expect that it would be lighter to "store" electricity by electrolysizing water and storing the hydrogen, then running the hydrogen through a fuel cell.
- zejn 5y ago
  Transport & Environment have done some studies - https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-73-hydrogen-22-ice-13/ https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-batter... Turns out battery charging and inverting has lower losses than electrolysis and compression.
hannob 5y ago
It doesn't say anything about range, but it seems it's a pretty small ferry. There are already much larger ferries that are battery-electric (largest one is the Bastø Electric in Norway, which can deliver 600 passengers and 200 cars), so I'm wondering a bit what the point is. Hydrogen is a less efficient way of using renewable energy than using electricity directly via batteries. The only reason to use it in shipping is that for larger ships and larger distances batteries are not feasible. DFDS is planning to convert a large ferry between copenhagen and Oslo to hydrogen: https://www.dfds.com/en/about/media/news/hydrogen-ferry-for-oslo-copenhagen https://www.dfds.com/en/about/media/news/hydrogen-ferry-for-... That's the kind of project where hydrogen makes sense.
- Already__Taken 5y ago
  got to remember small ferries do not have long stops to top off batteries. river crossing ferries night only load 4 cars in 2 minutes and then swap sides
- Forge36 5y ago
  What are the refule time comparisons?
- tallowen 5y ago
  I agree with what you're saying - hydrogen propulsion will make the most difference for large fleets over long distances. Right now, in the pacific northwest BC Ferries and Washington State ferries are moving to electrify their fleets. The crossing distances of these boats are much larger (The most popular BC ferries route looking to be more than 20x longer). As I recall, the procurement process for these much larger boats that go much further distances didn't include all battery (because the weight/space would have been prohibitive) or hydrogen electric (because the technology is too immature). I don't think it's reasonable to be experimenting with new technologies on 200 car ferries so even if hydrogen is not the ideal use case for this crossing, I'm excited to see this technology build a track record so it becomes a more feasible option for the large scale where it does make sense.
- formvoltron 5y ago
  Less efficient, but when the energy is used, the weight is gone. And that turns out to be important for efficiency. What I'm curious about his how long will they last in that harsh salty environment?
alex_young 5y ago
"Thanks to the local process of obtaining hydrogen, using only excess wind power, this will be the first European ferry powered entirely by renewable energy. Both the production process for hydrogen and its use as fuel don’t emit any toxic by-products." Intriguing, since hydrogen production is almost universally a byproduct of fossil fuel production. Not a ton of information here... I did a little digging, and indeed this project is using electrolysis powered by wind / tidal energy projects on a small Scottish archipelago named Orkney. They produce 130% of the power they consume, so they turn the remainder into H. Smart. Here's a really interesting article with lots of details: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190327-the-tiny-islands-leading-the-way-in-hydrogen-power https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190327-the-tiny-islands...
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Hydrogen seems like a really interesting potential solution to the renewable storage problem. I've done a bit of research in the past and seen that there are some early stage projects investigating this, but I'd be curious to hear from anyone who might know more.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    It’s not really that advantageous for energy storage. The round trip energy efficiency is less than 50% so half of any stored energy is wasted.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Perhaps surprisingly, the round-trip efficiency of an energy storage medium becomes relatively unimportant when the top-line cost of production gets low enough. Other costs come to dominate. The odds-on favorite for utility-scale battery storage is iron-air batteries. Nobody even mentions the round-trip efficiency of those, so it must be pretty awful. But they are darned cheap. We can expect solar, in particular, to be routinely massively over-provisioned, so that much of the time most of the output would otherwise be wasted if not used opportunistically to charge batteries or hydrolyze water to synthesize H2 or NH3.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
I love this. It's democratising fuel production, which is important step towards redistribution of wealth around the world. Anyone who can tap into cheap renewable energy source can make a profit.
bob229 5y ago
rsj_hn 5y ago
I heard that hydrogen, in the form of Ammonia, is the Next Big Thing for shipping, which is nice because those container ships are pretty nasty. https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-shipping-industry-is-betting-big-on-ammonia https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-shipping-industry-is-betti...

57 points by mardiyah 5y ago

love this one. We are making great steps towards a cleaner future

> Orkney’s excess renewable energy could be used to produce hydrogen, which would then be stored under pressure and used to power local transport, such as a ferry fleet. Maybe not actually powered by renewable energy but potentially so.

zejn 5y ago
Orkney is known to have an abundance of community wind energy, which they are unable to export to Scotland due to cable capacity limitations. They're experimenting with H2 generation instead.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  There will be good reasons to produce NH3, as well. But that also needs H2. H2 is not a super-great long-term storage medium. NH3 is a good choice to use to fuel retrofitted transport shipping (which would just need new tankage and plumbing, not new engines) and to drive generators in places where solar is not practical much of the time, such as north of 55 degrees latitude.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    NH3 = Ammonia.
- azornathogron 5y ago
  I wonder why they don't experiment with a bigger cable... Are grid interconnectors much more capital intensive or higher maintenance than Hydrogen generating plants? (Genuine question - I have no idea of the relative costs here)

dahfizz 5y ago

Does anyone have any good numbers on the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells vs batteries? Naively, I would expect that it would be lighter to "store" electricity by electrolysizing water and storing the hydrogen, then running the hydrogen through a fuel cell.

zejn 5y ago
Transport & Environment have done some studies - https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-73-hydrogen-22-ice-13/ https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-batter... Turns out battery charging and inverting has lower losses than electrolysis and compression.

hannob 5y ago

It doesn't say anything about range, but it seems it's a pretty small ferry. There are already much larger ferries that are battery-electric (largest one is the Bastø Electric in Norway, which can deliver 600 passengers and 200 cars), so I'm wondering a bit what the point is. Hydrogen is a less efficient way of using renewable energy than using electricity directly via batteries. The only reason to use it in shipping is that for larger ships and larger distances batteries are not feasible. DFDS is planning to convert a large ferry between copenhagen and Oslo to hydrogen: https://www.dfds.com/en/about/media/news/hydrogen-ferry-for-oslo-copenhagen https://www.dfds.com/en/about/media/news/hydrogen-ferry-for-... That's the kind of project where hydrogen makes sense.

Already__Taken 5y ago
got to remember small ferries do not have long stops to top off batteries. river crossing ferries night only load 4 cars in 2 minutes and then swap sides
Forge36 5y ago
What are the refule time comparisons?
tallowen 5y ago
I agree with what you're saying - hydrogen propulsion will make the most difference for large fleets over long distances. Right now, in the pacific northwest BC Ferries and Washington State ferries are moving to electrify their fleets. The crossing distances of these boats are much larger (The most popular BC ferries route looking to be more than 20x longer). As I recall, the procurement process for these much larger boats that go much further distances didn't include all battery (because the weight/space would have been prohibitive) or hydrogen electric (because the technology is too immature). I don't think it's reasonable to be experimenting with new technologies on 200 car ferries so even if hydrogen is not the ideal use case for this crossing, I'm excited to see this technology build a track record so it becomes a more feasible option for the large scale where it does make sense.
formvoltron 5y ago
Less efficient, but when the energy is used, the weight is gone. And that turns out to be important for efficiency. What I'm curious about his how long will they last in that harsh salty environment?

alex_young 5y ago

"Thanks to the local process of obtaining hydrogen, using only excess wind power, this will be the first European ferry powered entirely by renewable energy. Both the production process for hydrogen and its use as fuel don’t emit any toxic by-products." Intriguing, since hydrogen production is almost universally a byproduct of fossil fuel production. Not a ton of information here... I did a little digging, and indeed this project is using electrolysis powered by wind / tidal energy projects on a small Scottish archipelago named Orkney. They produce 130% of the power they consume, so they turn the remainder into H. Smart. Here's a really interesting article with lots of details: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190327-the-tiny-islands-leading-the-way-in-hydrogen-power https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190327-the-tiny-islands...

throwaway894345 5y ago
Hydrogen seems like a really interesting potential solution to the renewable storage problem. I've done a bit of research in the past and seen that there are some early stage projects investigating this, but I'd be curious to hear from anyone who might know more.
- mlindner 5y ago
  It’s not really that advantageous for energy storage. The round trip energy efficiency is less than 50% so half of any stored energy is wasted.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Perhaps surprisingly, the round-trip efficiency of an energy storage medium becomes relatively unimportant when the top-line cost of production gets low enough. Other costs come to dominate. The odds-on favorite for utility-scale battery storage is iron-air batteries. Nobody even mentions the round-trip efficiency of those, so it must be pretty awful. But they are darned cheap. We can expect solar, in particular, to be routinely massively over-provisioned, so that much of the time most of the output would otherwise be wasted if not used opportunistically to charge batteries or hydrolyze water to synthesize H2 or NH3.

CodeGlitch 5y ago

I love this. It's democratising fuel production, which is important step towards redistribution of wealth around the world. Anyone who can tap into cheap renewable energy source can make a profit.

bob229 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago

I heard that hydrogen, in the form of Ammonia, is the Next Big Thing for shipping, which is nice because those container ships are pretty nasty. https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-shipping-industry-is-betting-big-on-ammonia https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-shipping-industry-is-betti...