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You could've said the same thing about anything before it hits mass production. Wind and solar were expensive too at one point. It is not much of an argument.

by _hypx 3y ago

You could've said the same thing about anything before it hits mass production. Wind and solar were expensive too at one point. It is not much of an argument. The thing about hydrogen is that is made from an extremely plentiful resource: water + green energy. That puts the cost floor at below that of bunker fuel. In fact, the cost floor is pretty close to zero. So you are basically repeating the generic "renewable resources can never be cheap" argument. But it has been discredited. Nobody uses anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. You are making up imaginary scenarios.

Retric 3y ago
Clean energy isn’t free nor is the actual infrastructure required. Round trip efficiency for hydrogen is currently ~18% excluding horrifically expensive fuel cells which are completely off the table for these ships. On top of this you got to pay for the infrastructure to actually make the hydrogen + infrastructure to store the stuff + the increased costs of building ships to handle it. Even optimistic estimates put Hydrogen well above bunker fuel. > Nobody is using anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. Cargo ships with hot swapping batteries are already in use. At that point it’s Europe to Asia is an infrastructure problem not a research problem. People hope to eventually solve Hydrogen’s issues with production and storage but have made minimal progress over the last 20 years. Just because we want technology to work doesn’t mean it’s actually possible to build it. Hell just look at how much people have hyped up Nuclear as a source of cheap electricity as long as we invest in more R&D. Except even with huge investments in new designs etc there’s been zero actual progress in lowering costs.
- _hypx 3y ago
  Clean energy is regularly free or even negatively priced. It is at the very least, extremely cheap. It's funny how PV panels at 20% efficiency never stopped it from catching on. Making the same accusation against hydrogen is just repeating this already debunked argument. The whole infrastructure for hydrogen will just repurpose or modify natural gas infrastructure. It is not expensive. It will be vastly cheaper than trying to do it entirely with batteries. And without any resource constraints, it is guaranteed to eventually be cheaper than bunker fuel. Again, you are repeating anti-wind and anti-solar argument the past. If those technologies plunged to nearly nothing in cost, why would the next renewable technology that relies on an extremely plentiful substance be any different? Finally, you're entering into the "I'm just making this shit up" phase of your argument. People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Something similar has happened with a variety of other green fuels like methanol, ammonia, etc. None of this is even that challenging of a problem. The only thing that is proving to be hard is trying to power everything with a battery. It is totally nuts for ships, and that's even before realizing how much it costs. FYI, nuclear has been killed off due to legislation, many due to fears over radioactive waste. But hydrogen and other chemical fuels have no such concerns. It will scale the same as wind and solar did.
  - Retric 3y ago
    > People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Only at a significant loss. You can go out and buy a hydrogen powered car today and pay more for the car, have worse range, pay more for energy to move that car, and have to deal with limited infrastructure. People are operating battery powered boats at a profit, that’s a monumental difference. Limiting yourself to “free” for electricity means spending more money on equipment. Actually making industrial scale hydrogen requires expensive electrolysis equipment and having that sit idle 95% of the time is expensive independent of electricity costs. Similarly aiming for seasonal storage requires investment in storage so it’s there when you want it. This isn’t free and no you can’t just reuse natural gas systems, even just detecting small leaks requires different equipment, the demand is higher, hydrogen embrittlement is a serious problem, and the energy density is different. You can consistently get ~3c/kWh for close to 8 hours a day via building your solar farm, but that means your electrolysis equipment is still idle 66% of the time and your still paying 3c/0.18 = 16.7c/kWh just for electricity ignoring other costs to get 1kWh of useful energy at the end. This is why Hydrogen is currently expensive, until something fundamentally changes with the underlying economics due to new technology it’s going to stay expensive. Nuclear has both economic and risk issue. Legislation impacted individual countries but a handful are built each year. It’s not even just disasters, several nuclear projects have gone wildly over budget scaring both small countries and free market investors. The risks are high even ignoring accidents and the rewards don’t match those risks. Westinghouse top executives were convicted of fraud for over covering up project failures in two canceled South Carolina nuclear reactors: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-executive-charged-failed-nuclear-project-2021-08-19/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-exe... That’s part of a long list of failed US reactors and an even longer list globally some of which where even worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_nuclear_power_stations_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_nuclear_pow... That said, I acknowledge politics has played a role it’s simply not the most important one. Japan was happy with nuclear until an unexpected 500 dollar bill, other countries look at that and get concerned.
    - _hypx 3y ago
      Because prototype vehicles are not supposed to be profit centers. The fact that now you are shifting to cars shows how uninterested you were in this topic to begin with. Please stop making shit up. We already have seen people reuse or at least test natural gas infrastructure with hydrogen. There are no showstopper problems. It is a fully solvable problem and is going to happen. You literally are making up your own fictional scenario to rationalize how you can disconnect $0.02/kWh electricity from cheap hydrogen. This is pure incoherent rubbish. Ultimately, you are creating an alternative reality to rationalize your delusion that batteries can power anything while nothing else can. No fucking idea why are you ranting about nuclear safety either. It is one of the safest energy sources out there.

by _hypx 3y ago

Retric 3y ago

Clean energy isn’t free nor is the actual infrastructure required. Round trip efficiency for hydrogen is currently ~18% excluding horrifically expensive fuel cells which are completely off the table for these ships. On top of this you got to pay for the infrastructure to actually make the hydrogen + infrastructure to store the stuff + the increased costs of building ships to handle it. Even optimistic estimates put Hydrogen well above bunker fuel. > Nobody is using anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. Cargo ships with hot swapping batteries are already in use. At that point it’s Europe to Asia is an infrastructure problem not a research problem. People hope to eventually solve Hydrogen’s issues with production and storage but have made minimal progress over the last 20 years. Just because we want technology to work doesn’t mean it’s actually possible to build it. Hell just look at how much people have hyped up Nuclear as a source of cheap electricity as long as we invest in more R&D. Except even with huge investments in new designs etc there’s been zero actual progress in lowering costs.

_hypx 3y ago
Clean energy is regularly free or even negatively priced. It is at the very least, extremely cheap. It's funny how PV panels at 20% efficiency never stopped it from catching on. Making the same accusation against hydrogen is just repeating this already debunked argument. The whole infrastructure for hydrogen will just repurpose or modify natural gas infrastructure. It is not expensive. It will be vastly cheaper than trying to do it entirely with batteries. And without any resource constraints, it is guaranteed to eventually be cheaper than bunker fuel. Again, you are repeating anti-wind and anti-solar argument the past. If those technologies plunged to nearly nothing in cost, why would the next renewable technology that relies on an extremely plentiful substance be any different? Finally, you're entering into the "I'm just making this shit up" phase of your argument. People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Something similar has happened with a variety of other green fuels like methanol, ammonia, etc. None of this is even that challenging of a problem. The only thing that is proving to be hard is trying to power everything with a battery. It is totally nuts for ships, and that's even before realizing how much it costs. FYI, nuclear has been killed off due to legislation, many due to fears over radioactive waste. But hydrogen and other chemical fuels have no such concerns. It will scale the same as wind and solar did.
- Retric 3y ago
  > People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Only at a significant loss. You can go out and buy a hydrogen powered car today and pay more for the car, have worse range, pay more for energy to move that car, and have to deal with limited infrastructure. People are operating battery powered boats at a profit, that’s a monumental difference. Limiting yourself to “free” for electricity means spending more money on equipment. Actually making industrial scale hydrogen requires expensive electrolysis equipment and having that sit idle 95% of the time is expensive independent of electricity costs. Similarly aiming for seasonal storage requires investment in storage so it’s there when you want it. This isn’t free and no you can’t just reuse natural gas systems, even just detecting small leaks requires different equipment, the demand is higher, hydrogen embrittlement is a serious problem, and the energy density is different. You can consistently get ~3c/kWh for close to 8 hours a day via building your solar farm, but that means your electrolysis equipment is still idle 66% of the time and your still paying 3c/0.18 = 16.7c/kWh just for electricity ignoring other costs to get 1kWh of useful energy at the end. This is why Hydrogen is currently expensive, until something fundamentally changes with the underlying economics due to new technology it’s going to stay expensive. Nuclear has both economic and risk issue. Legislation impacted individual countries but a handful are built each year. It’s not even just disasters, several nuclear projects have gone wildly over budget scaring both small countries and free market investors. The risks are high even ignoring accidents and the rewards don’t match those risks. Westinghouse top executives were convicted of fraud for over covering up project failures in two canceled South Carolina nuclear reactors: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-executive-charged-failed-nuclear-project-2021-08-19/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-exe... That’s part of a long list of failed US reactors and an even longer list globally some of which where even worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_nuclear_power_stations_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_nuclear_pow... That said, I acknowledge politics has played a role it’s simply not the most important one. Japan was happy with nuclear until an unexpected 500 dollar bill, other countries look at that and get concerned.
  - _hypx 3y ago
    Because prototype vehicles are not supposed to be profit centers. The fact that now you are shifting to cars shows how uninterested you were in this topic to begin with. Please stop making shit up. We already have seen people reuse or at least test natural gas infrastructure with hydrogen. There are no showstopper problems. It is a fully solvable problem and is going to happen. You literally are making up your own fictional scenario to rationalize how you can disconnect $0.02/kWh electricity from cheap hydrogen. This is pure incoherent rubbish. Ultimately, you are creating an alternative reality to rationalize your delusion that batteries can power anything while nothing else can. No fucking idea why are you ranting about nuclear safety either. It is one of the safest energy sources out there.