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"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. Bo

"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.
    - Hypx_ 5y ago
      Iron-air batteries are literally just fuel cells that involve iron instead of hydrogen. THe odds on favorite is hydrogen fuel cells and it probably can’t be anything else (short of some kind of nuclear solution).
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        You keep saying so, but what I am seeing is serious plans for iron, and synthesizing NH3 as portable fuel, but very little activity on H2. Is there actually any current work on industrial-scale H2 synthesis for storage, as opposed to for use in e.g. steel production or fuel?
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        I Googled around for this some time ago and found quite a few grid-storage projects in the US and Europe (both public and private), but I don’t have links handy at the moment. They all seem to be pretty early-days IIRC. But yes, mostly you have to sift through a lot of results related to transportation fuel cells.
        Hypx_ 5y ago
        It should be noted that using hydrogen for steel or fuel production lead almost directly leads to some kind of hydrogen storage. If you can make that much hydrogen, it just becomes a natural step to use it as a energy storage system. Also, the scale of hydrogen storage facilities far exceeds anything else ever proposed: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/10/23/weekend-read-australias-massive-hydrogen-storage-potential/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/10/23/weekend-rea... It's clear that obsessing over the last step is unnecessary. As soon as you have the hydrogen available, there will be many obvious solutions available.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        I don't doubt that, once hydrogen becomes heavily used as a fuel--exclusively for aviation, I expect--it will then also become useful, secondarily, as a storage medium for utility power. But the first condition is barely even in planning stages, if there. By the time hydrogen as bulk fuel does happen, other storage for utility power will be very mature, and hydrogen will need really compelling advantages to be able to compete in places where it is not already being stored as aviation fuel. The cited article points out that utility-grade storage in salt caverns is still a wholly hypothetical possibility, and speculates on problems that might yet render it impractical.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    If that energy would otherwise be wasted (because of an excess of supply in the market) then perhaps the efficiency doesn't matter so much.
    - Leynos 5y ago
      It always struck me that 50% efficiency is better than 0%.

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.
  - Hypx_ 5y ago
    Iron-air batteries are literally just fuel cells that involve iron instead of hydrogen. THe odds on favorite is hydrogen fuel cells and it probably can’t be anything else (short of some kind of nuclear solution).
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      You keep saying so, but what I am seeing is serious plans for iron, and synthesizing NH3 as portable fuel, but very little activity on H2. Is there actually any current work on industrial-scale H2 synthesis for storage, as opposed to for use in e.g. steel production or fuel?
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        I Googled around for this some time ago and found quite a few grid-storage projects in the US and Europe (both public and private), but I don’t have links handy at the moment. They all seem to be pretty early-days IIRC. But yes, mostly you have to sift through a lot of results related to transportation fuel cells.
      - Hypx_ 5y ago
        It should be noted that using hydrogen for steel or fuel production lead almost directly leads to some kind of hydrogen storage. If you can make that much hydrogen, it just becomes a natural step to use it as a energy storage system. Also, the scale of hydrogen storage facilities far exceeds anything else ever proposed: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/10/23/weekend-read-australias-massive-hydrogen-storage-potential/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/10/23/weekend-rea... It's clear that obsessing over the last step is unnecessary. As soon as you have the hydrogen available, there will be many obvious solutions available.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        I don't doubt that, once hydrogen becomes heavily used as a fuel--exclusively for aviation, I expect--it will then also become useful, secondarily, as a storage medium for utility power. But the first condition is barely even in planning stages, if there. By the time hydrogen as bulk fuel does happen, other storage for utility power will be very mature, and hydrogen will need really compelling advantages to be able to compete in places where it is not already being stored as aviation fuel. The cited article points out that utility-grade storage in salt caverns is still a wholly hypothetical possibility, and speculates on problems that might yet render it impractical.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  If that energy would otherwise be wasted (because of an excess of supply in the market) then perhaps the efficiency doesn't matter so much.
  - Leynos 5y ago
    It always struck me that 50% efficiency is better than 0%.