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> And all of that is before you consider that creating hydrogen is inherently more expensive than just using renewable power directly (via batteries). This may

> And all of that is before you consider that creating hydrogen is inherently more expensive than just using renewable power directly (via batteries). This may be nit-picky of me, but how is using a chemical battery to store energy using electricity directly, but not using a chemical (hydrogen) to store energy not using electricity directly? A standard definition of a battery is anything that store energy and outputs electricity. To that extent hydrogen is just the chemical element of a battery (fuel cell). You don’t recharge it by inputting electricity (like you do a lithium ion battery), but you replace the active chemical element of it by using electricity to generate more hydrogen and inserting it into your empty fuel cells (recycling your battery basically). I think if you define direct electricity usage to exclude hydrogen (which is kind of silly) then you’d also need to exclude all other forms of battery. And you are left with basically just overhead wires. Also nobody is proposing a mass transport of hydrogen to be a viable future. Most proposals have them generated via electrolysis on site.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
Solar panel to battery to electrical engine is pretty efficient. We're talking ~80% efficiencies here. Solar panel to hydrogen you are down to 30-40% right away before you do anything with the hydrogen. You still need to transport it. Once it gets to a fuel cell, you hit maybe 70-80% efficiencies. That's pretty good but these inefficiencies multiply. So, now you are down to 20%. That's a 4x difference. And of course there are losses along the way, etc. So it's more like 10 to 15%. Burning it is worse.
- defrost 4y ago
  You're correct that the current state of the art isn't great and may in fact be worse than you imagine [1]. An important fact, though, is that there has been little serious sustained effort to push for hydrogen production until now. Just recently we have seen papers on new techniques [2] some of which are already being tested at trial industrial scales [3] What is happening now is similar to vaccine development during COVID - accelerated parallel development of stages; the heavy industry side of hydrogen development is being pushed and built on the assumption that key stages will be improved in both incremental and hopefully radical ways. The message from the climate side of these developments is there's little to no time to waste. [1] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/se/d0se01761b https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/se/d0se0... [2] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/seawater-splitting-system-could-scale-up-renewable-hydrogen-production/4013332.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/seawater-splitting-syste... [3] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/water-splitting-device-solves-puzzle-of-producing-hydrogen-direct-from-seawater/4016645.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/water-splitting-device-s...
- harriet1 4y ago
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jillesvangurp 4y ago

Solar panel to battery to electrical engine is pretty efficient. We're talking ~80% efficiencies here. Solar panel to hydrogen you are down to 30-40% right away before you do anything with the hydrogen. You still need to transport it. Once it gets to a fuel cell, you hit maybe 70-80% efficiencies. That's pretty good but these inefficiencies multiply. So, now you are down to 20%. That's a 4x difference. And of course there are losses along the way, etc. So it's more like 10 to 15%. Burning it is worse.

defrost 4y ago
You're correct that the current state of the art isn't great and may in fact be worse than you imagine [1]. An important fact, though, is that there has been little serious sustained effort to push for hydrogen production until now. Just recently we have seen papers on new techniques [2] some of which are already being tested at trial industrial scales [3] What is happening now is similar to vaccine development during COVID - accelerated parallel development of stages; the heavy industry side of hydrogen development is being pushed and built on the assumption that key stages will be improved in both incremental and hopefully radical ways. The message from the climate side of these developments is there's little to no time to waste. [1] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/se/d0se01761b https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/se/d0se0... [2] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/seawater-splitting-system-could-scale-up-renewable-hydrogen-production/4013332.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/seawater-splitting-syste... [3] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/water-splitting-device-solves-puzzle-of-producing-hydrogen-direct-from-seawater/4016645.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/water-splitting-device-s...
harriet1 4y ago
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