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It technically is since natural hydrogen exists. The problem with this logic is that renewable energy is regularly plunging to zero or even negative prices. Re

by _hypx 3y ago

It technically is since natural hydrogen exists. The problem with this logic is that renewable energy is regularly plunging to zero or even negative prices. Renewable leads to massive swings between excess production and massive shortages. Hydrogen is significantly more valuable than the electric used to make it, even if the end goal is just make more electricity. The best way to describe it is that hydrogen is dispatchable energy, but the energy used to make it is non-dispatchable energy. The former is necessary and will always be worth something, but the latter is often totally worthless. That claim is purely delusional. This is a repeat of anti-photovoltaic arguments, that solar panels could never be cheap. In reality, there are simply no substantial raw material requirements preventing either electrolyzers nor PVs from plunging in cost. History will just repeat itself and the critics will be outed as closedminded fools. Hydrogen is 10x cheaper to move around that electricity. It will be more practical to build a hydrogen infrastructure than an electrical one: https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-for-an-electric-grid/ https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo... Your article is thoroughly distorting the real story. The situation actually being described is as followed: > Rio Tinto executive John Mulcahy told the summit that hydrogen was less efficient than batteries for mine trucks under a scenario where a miner had to produce its own hydrogen from solar or wind power. > “Hydrogen at the moment isn’t our preference, but it doesn’t mean it is dead by any means,” he said. https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/fortescue-and-rio-say-batteries-will-beat-hydrogen-for-trucks-20230614-p5dgj4 https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/fortescue-and-rio-say-b... In short, it doesn't make sense to make hydrogen on the spot when you already have access to that energy and can use it directly. But this is just one scenario, and they haven't ruled out other ones. This is not a particular relevant situation for the rest of us. Very few people will have direct access to renewables in a remote area. It is ultimately just one possible outcome. And honestly, there's very little chance they are moving away from diesel trucks anytime soon. This is just them speculating about what they will do, not that they are obligated to actually do it.

_aavaa_ 3y ago
> It technically is since natural hydrogen exists. A pedantic point which makes little difference given how much there is and how much we need. Further, being natural makes it as renewable as natural gas. > The problem with this logic is that renewable energy is regularly plunging to zero or even negative prices. Renewable energy does not swing to negative prices. Their excess production causes gas, coal, and nuclear to have to go negative. Remove those from the grid and the negative price magically goes away. And to reiterate with your point from earlier: "But just like other types of renewable energy, this is actually heading towards nearly zero." If renewable energy costs are getting that cheap we can simply keep overbuilding them and have no need for hydrogen in the first place. The made for hydrogen is often as an energy storage for when we don't have renewables, well if the renewables are so cheap let's just build them until we don't have times where we're short electricty and then skip all the complexity of making and storing hydrogen. > Hydrogen is significantly more valuable than the electric used to make it, even if the end goal is just make more electricity. Black Hydrogen right now is a commodity chemical sold at 1.50 $/kg + transportation. I don't see the use cases often touted taking off. Instead I see wind, solar, hydro, and batteries eating hydrogen's potential market. > The best way to describe it is that hydrogen is dispatchable energy, but the energy used to make it is non-dispatchable energy. As a dispatchable energy source that requires lots of equipment and loses >70% of the energy put into the it, it's a pretty bad storage system. > That claim is purely delusional. This is a repeat of anti-photovoltaic arguments, that solar panels could never be cheap. In reality, there are simply no substantial raw material requirements preventing either electrolyzers nor PVs from plunging in cost. I never claimed it's about raw materials. Again, the electrolyzers are not the only equipment required, there are lots of valves, and pumps, and shit. And all of those have been mass produced for a long time. So they won't see the cost reductions that come from learning. Solar panels went down in cost because they provided something other energy sources did not and had people willing to pay a premium to bring the cost down. Electrolyzers don't have that market right now, and by the time they get cheap enough what market will be left for them? > Hydrogen is 10x cheaper to move around that electricity. It will be more practical to build a hydrogen infrastructure than an electrical one: https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo... That is an ludicrus thing to claim, especially when presenting zero evidence to back the claim. > For economic reasons, it is much better to transport energy over long distances by molecules. When you transport hydrogen over a distance of about a thousand miles by pipeline, the costs are about half a cent per kilowatt-hour. When you do the same with electricity, it is about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. I'd like to know how many pipelines there are that transport hydrogen that kind of distance, I'm betting on the very low single digits, if any. It's easy to make claims about the efficiency of things that exist on paper and then compare them to the reality of things actually build. > Your article is thoroughly distorting the real story. The situation actually being described is as followed: > > In short, it doesn't make sense to make hydrogen on the spot when you already have access to that energy and can use it directly. But this is just one scenario, and they haven't ruled out other ones. The very next sentence is: "What we are looking at primarily is the efficiency of the cycle, to go from charging and discharging a battery and powering a truck, versus powering an electrolyser, creating hydrogen, liquefying and compressing it and then converting it back into a fuel cell." It doesn't matter where it's made, the argument for why they don't want it doesn't change. All of those steps are there even if the hydrogen is made off-site. > This is not a particular relevant situation for the rest of us. Very few people will have direct access to renewables in a remote area. They will have even less access to hydrogen distribution/transmission in that case.
- _hypx 3y ago
  FYI, there is potentially enough natural hydrogen to last for thousands of years: https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-eart... As a shortcut to zero emissions, it has major potential. Nor is it "non-renewable" in the same as fossil fuels. It naturally regenerates in the same way geothermal regenerates. You are being totally dishonest by claiming renewable energy never generates negative prices: https://balkangreenenergynews.com/negative-power-prices-reveal-market-is-unprepared-to-tap-on-renewables-potential/ https://balkangreenenergynews.com/negative-power-prices-reve... Everyone already accepts that it is renewable energy causing this. This is a major flaw in your logic, and frankly you are deluding yourself on this point. Your solution of overbuilding renewable energy is that has been proposed many times before. It is usually called overprovisioning. The problem is that implies truly ridiculous amount of excess renewable that can be dumped into hydrogen production. Rather than eliminating the need for hydrogen, it creates the situation for where nearly free hydrogen will materialize. And since it is cheaper to move around hydrogen than electricity, hydrogen will end up displacing much of the grid instead. Hydrogen today is simply a byproduct of natural gas production. As a result, hydrogen traditional meant natural gas infrastructure and hydrogen is produced when it is needed. If it was its own separate resource, we will have a dedicated infrastructure for it. This mirrors the path that natural gas itself followed, since it was originally a by-product of oil production. The critics are simply lying about the potential efficiencies of hydrogen. In reality, it is an electrochemical system and has same theoretical efficiency as batteries. All the critics are doing are conflating practical limits with technological limits. But even this is backfiring, as their understanding of "practical" limits are stuck in the 1990s if not earlier. Large installations can reach significantly higher levels of efficiency, and perhaps even rival batteries and other energy storage ideas: https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review20/fc330_ghezel-ayagh_2020_p.pdf https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review20/fc330_ghezel-a... > Develop an energy storage technology based on Reversible Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (RSOFC) system capable of round trip efficiency of 70% and projected energy cost of less than $100/kWh As I mentioned the part about hydrogen being 10x cheaper to move around than electricity, that claim would extend to all related aspects, such as valves and pumps. Not to mention why you would think "valves and pumps and shit" would be expensive at all. These are minor costs compared to the fundamental technology itself. Also, there was not mass production of electrolyzers in the past. I'm curious as to why you even make this claim at all, since it is a pure assertion that has no evidence behind and does not even pass the "smell test." It comes off as total BS. In reality, what is happening is the process of mass production of electrolyzers, just like it happened with photovoltaics: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-29/green-hydrogen-equipment-makers-poised-for-rapid-growth-in-china https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-29/green-hyd... > China’s capacity to manufacture electrolyzers – the equipment used to make green hydrogen – could grow about 20 times by 2028 as costs of the clean energy source plunge, according to CICC. It is an obvious repeat of the same scenario as with photovoltaics. History is clearly repeating itself. What is your counterevidence to that claim them? The person in question, Ad van Wijk, is a professor and has been a long-term researcher in renewable energy. If he is making that claim, it should be taken as credible and not be dismissed on your own opinion. Even if there was only one hydrogen pipeline of similar length, then wouldn't that be sufficient to demonstrate the claim in question? Not sure how this is an argument at all. Not to mention that thousands of km of pipelines globally: research in this area: https://www.iea.org/reports/hydrogen-supply https://www.iea.org/reports/hydrogen-supply Except if the hydrogen is made off-site, it can now utilize excess renewable energy production. In particular, the times when renewable energy is free or negatively priced. That will make the problems they listed go away. Then even admitted to that in the article: > But Mr Mulcahy said hydrogen might become competitive for mining trucks in the future if it could be purchased at the mine gate, in the same way diesel is purchased from external providers now.

by _hypx 3y ago

_aavaa_ 3y ago

> It technically is since natural hydrogen exists. A pedantic point which makes little difference given how much there is and how much we need. Further, being natural makes it as renewable as natural gas. > The problem with this logic is that renewable energy is regularly plunging to zero or even negative prices. Renewable energy does not swing to negative prices. Their excess production causes gas, coal, and nuclear to have to go negative. Remove those from the grid and the negative price magically goes away. And to reiterate with your point from earlier: "But just like other types of renewable energy, this is actually heading towards nearly zero." If renewable energy costs are getting that cheap we can simply keep overbuilding them and have no need for hydrogen in the first place. The made for hydrogen is often as an energy storage for when we don't have renewables, well if the renewables are so cheap let's just build them until we don't have times where we're short electricty and then skip all the complexity of making and storing hydrogen. > Hydrogen is significantly more valuable than the electric used to make it, even if the end goal is just make more electricity. Black Hydrogen right now is a commodity chemical sold at 1.50 $/kg + transportation. I don't see the use cases often touted taking off. Instead I see wind, solar, hydro, and batteries eating hydrogen's potential market. > The best way to describe it is that hydrogen is dispatchable energy, but the energy used to make it is non-dispatchable energy. As a dispatchable energy source that requires lots of equipment and loses >70% of the energy put into the it, it's a pretty bad storage system. > That claim is purely delusional. This is a repeat of anti-photovoltaic arguments, that solar panels could never be cheap. In reality, there are simply no substantial raw material requirements preventing either electrolyzers nor PVs from plunging in cost. I never claimed it's about raw materials. Again, the electrolyzers are not the only equipment required, there are lots of valves, and pumps, and shit. And all of those have been mass produced for a long time. So they won't see the cost reductions that come from learning. Solar panels went down in cost because they provided something other energy sources did not and had people willing to pay a premium to bring the cost down. Electrolyzers don't have that market right now, and by the time they get cheap enough what market will be left for them? > Hydrogen is 10x cheaper to move around that electricity. It will be more practical to build a hydrogen infrastructure than an electrical one: https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo... That is an ludicrus thing to claim, especially when presenting zero evidence to back the claim. > For economic reasons, it is much better to transport energy over long distances by molecules. When you transport hydrogen over a distance of about a thousand miles by pipeline, the costs are about half a cent per kilowatt-hour. When you do the same with electricity, it is about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. I'd like to know how many pipelines there are that transport hydrogen that kind of distance, I'm betting on the very low single digits, if any. It's easy to make claims about the efficiency of things that exist on paper and then compare them to the reality of things actually build. > Your article is thoroughly distorting the real story. The situation actually being described is as followed: > > In short, it doesn't make sense to make hydrogen on the spot when you already have access to that energy and can use it directly. But this is just one scenario, and they haven't ruled out other ones. The very next sentence is: "What we are looking at primarily is the efficiency of the cycle, to go from charging and discharging a battery and powering a truck, versus powering an electrolyser, creating hydrogen, liquefying and compressing it and then converting it back into a fuel cell." It doesn't matter where it's made, the argument for why they don't want it doesn't change. All of those steps are there even if the hydrogen is made off-site. > This is not a particular relevant situation for the rest of us. Very few people will have direct access to renewables in a remote area. They will have even less access to hydrogen distribution/transmission in that case.

_hypx 3y ago
FYI, there is potentially enough natural hydrogen to last for thousands of years: https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-eart... As a shortcut to zero emissions, it has major potential. Nor is it "non-renewable" in the same as fossil fuels. It naturally regenerates in the same way geothermal regenerates. You are being totally dishonest by claiming renewable energy never generates negative prices: https://balkangreenenergynews.com/negative-power-prices-reveal-market-is-unprepared-to-tap-on-renewables-potential/ https://balkangreenenergynews.com/negative-power-prices-reve... Everyone already accepts that it is renewable energy causing this. This is a major flaw in your logic, and frankly you are deluding yourself on this point. Your solution of overbuilding renewable energy is that has been proposed many times before. It is usually called overprovisioning. The problem is that implies truly ridiculous amount of excess renewable that can be dumped into hydrogen production. Rather than eliminating the need for hydrogen, it creates the situation for where nearly free hydrogen will materialize. And since it is cheaper to move around hydrogen than electricity, hydrogen will end up displacing much of the grid instead. Hydrogen today is simply a byproduct of natural gas production. As a result, hydrogen traditional meant natural gas infrastructure and hydrogen is produced when it is needed. If it was its own separate resource, we will have a dedicated infrastructure for it. This mirrors the path that natural gas itself followed, since it was originally a by-product of oil production. The critics are simply lying about the potential efficiencies of hydrogen. In reality, it is an electrochemical system and has same theoretical efficiency as batteries. All the critics are doing are conflating practical limits with technological limits. But even this is backfiring, as their understanding of "practical" limits are stuck in the 1990s if not earlier. Large installations can reach significantly higher levels of efficiency, and perhaps even rival batteries and other energy storage ideas: https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review20/fc330_ghezel-ayagh_2020_p.pdf https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review20/fc330_ghezel-a... > Develop an energy storage technology based on Reversible Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (RSOFC) system capable of round trip efficiency of 70% and projected energy cost of less than $100/kWh As I mentioned the part about hydrogen being 10x cheaper to move around than electricity, that claim would extend to all related aspects, such as valves and pumps. Not to mention why you would think "valves and pumps and shit" would be expensive at all. These are minor costs compared to the fundamental technology itself. Also, there was not mass production of electrolyzers in the past. I'm curious as to why you even make this claim at all, since it is a pure assertion that has no evidence behind and does not even pass the "smell test." It comes off as total BS. In reality, what is happening is the process of mass production of electrolyzers, just like it happened with photovoltaics: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-29/green-hydrogen-equipment-makers-poised-for-rapid-growth-in-china https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-29/green-hyd... > China’s capacity to manufacture electrolyzers – the equipment used to make green hydrogen – could grow about 20 times by 2028 as costs of the clean energy source plunge, according to CICC. It is an obvious repeat of the same scenario as with photovoltaics. History is clearly repeating itself. What is your counterevidence to that claim them? The person in question, Ad van Wijk, is a professor and has been a long-term researcher in renewable energy. If he is making that claim, it should be taken as credible and not be dismissed on your own opinion. Even if there was only one hydrogen pipeline of similar length, then wouldn't that be sufficient to demonstrate the claim in question? Not sure how this is an argument at all. Not to mention that thousands of km of pipelines globally: research in this area: https://www.iea.org/reports/hydrogen-supply https://www.iea.org/reports/hydrogen-supply Except if the hydrogen is made off-site, it can now utilize excess renewable energy production. In particular, the times when renewable energy is free or negatively priced. That will make the problems they listed go away. Then even admitted to that in the article: > But Mr Mulcahy said hydrogen might become competitive for mining trucks in the future if it could be purchased at the mine gate, in the same way diesel is purchased from external providers now.