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Hydrogen is a horrible means of energy storage, even when stationary. Splitting water, compressing the hydrogen and then converting it back to energy even with

Hydrogen is a horrible means of energy storage, even when stationary. Splitting water, compressing the hydrogen and then converting it back to energy even with expensive, much more rare materials intensive fuel cells, is still far less than 50% efficient. Batteries are better than 80% efficient and are much easier to produce than fuel cells. Burning hydrogen is just completely bone-headed.

samtho 4y ago
You are stuck in the thinking that what we have is going to be as good as it gets and are unable to see past the details of current tech and reaching for this ideal of efficiency that batteries are frankly an outlier of. The efficiency metric does not matter if we have power being generated and no way to either burn or capture this energy at the rate at which it is generated. Yes, batteries are the most efficient at making power available to us at the moment of demand, which is why they will take over a portion of the vehicle market (think local delivery vehicles, commuter vehicles, anything that returns to the same spot or travels predictability) but other means of power storage will be required for other use-cases. Batteries have an upper limit as to how fast they can charge, and there are cases where we need to be able to sink excess power or risk losing 100% of it. There will come a time where we have excess power to burn but the fleeting nature of renewables will require that we store this energy somehow, which I fully believe that hydrogen will play a role in as you are able to create it at a rate proportional to energy you put in, which is more important that efficiency. Batteries will not scale to our needs at more than a micro-grid level. Scaling hydrogen production will bring down the marginal cost of producing each unit. Remember that current battery tech was not as easy to produce as it is today for precisely the same reasons I am hypothesizing that fuel cell technology will become easier and cheaper to produce and more efficient in its operation so I will just reiterate this from my post: > Complaining that a solution is inefficient, which has not been innovated on, is small-minded thinking.

samtho 4y ago

You are stuck in the thinking that what we have is going to be as good as it gets and are unable to see past the details of current tech and reaching for this ideal of efficiency that batteries are frankly an outlier of. The efficiency metric does not matter if we have power being generated and no way to either burn or capture this energy at the rate at which it is generated. Yes, batteries are the most efficient at making power available to us at the moment of demand, which is why they will take over a portion of the vehicle market (think local delivery vehicles, commuter vehicles, anything that returns to the same spot or travels predictability) but other means of power storage will be required for other use-cases. Batteries have an upper limit as to how fast they can charge, and there are cases where we need to be able to sink excess power or risk losing 100% of it. There will come a time where we have excess power to burn but the fleeting nature of renewables will require that we store this energy somehow, which I fully believe that hydrogen will play a role in as you are able to create it at a rate proportional to energy you put in, which is more important that efficiency. Batteries will not scale to our needs at more than a micro-grid level. Scaling hydrogen production will bring down the marginal cost of producing each unit. Remember that current battery tech was not as easy to produce as it is today for precisely the same reasons I am hypothesizing that fuel cell technology will become easier and cheaper to produce and more efficient in its operation so I will just reiterate this from my post: > Complaining that a solution is inefficient, which has not been innovated on, is small-minded thinking.