Umm, that sounds exactly like a question of economy of scale. If the market is so small of course its going to cost more to store and transport.

The trouble is a fuel tanker for compressed* hydrogen can only carry arround 300-500kg of hydrogen. The next generation use composites to make the tubes lighter which increaces their capacity. But it’s nowhere near what you can put in a conventional hydrocarbon tanker.

So you need a tanker for every 100 cars, and those cars need filling about twice as often as ICE cars.

There are lots of good things about H2 and fuel cells. But I’m just not convinced the economics are anywhere even close to stacking up, not for scalability reasons, but for very fundamental ones.

There are even proposals to re use existing gas pipelines. Which is possible (metallurgy depending). But that then requires PSA systems at the fueling station to re purify it and recompression.

All possible, but comparing to trying to describe how an electric car fills up. When the electricity costs about an eighth of H2, and uses existing infrastructure and you see the magnitude of the gulf between the two technologies.

*liquid is an option, storing it at about -250C. But that brings its own issues.

I repeat the same thing I always say at this point. HAVE YOU SEEN THE COST OF HYDROGEN!

Electicity is going to get ALOT more expensive..and Hydrogen will get cheaper (the company I work for is developing technology now that will slash the cost of hydrogen production)…that will change the economics significantly. Governments around the world will have to fill the gaping big hole in their tax revenues when fossil fuels are phased out so expect huge tax rises on electricity in the future.This will balance the economics.

For commercial applications uptime is all important…like the most important thing. They can’t down tools while they wait for their digger, to recharge…which in turn means a shed load of other machinery has to down tools because without the digger they cant work. You’d shut down a building site or an entire operation. For those applications batteries are just not an option.

If electricity goes up in price, so does hydrogen… unless you’re planning making hydrogen without electricity anytime soon.

Taxes are one thing, but other factors will impact the cost of leccy to reduce it. Switiching to more renewables helps as the OPEX for power gen this way are near as zero as they can be, (the exact opposite of nuclear – massive CAPEX, massive OPEX).

The economics for hydrogen are horrible, and the practical application way harder than enlarging electricity

The more we can eliminate the need for cars the less of an issue they actually are. That seems to be the bit people conveniently ignore.

To a degree, and a large one with infrastructure being 99% car-orientated. But I think that genie won’t fit back in the bottle. The majority of short trips aren’t by car because they *need* to be, it’s simply because they can be. The majority of long trips aren’t made by car because there are no public transport options, it’s simply because they can be. When convenience is being defined as ‘need’, seems to be the bit that people (conveniently) ignore.

Electicity is going to get ALOT more expensive

Is it?

Electicity is going to get ALOT more expensive..and Hydrogen will get cheaper (the company I work for is developing technology now that will slash the cost of hydrogen production)

The issue isn’t the cost of production. There is a worldwide excess of H2 production already as it’s produced as a byproduct of fossil fuels, it’s just vary difficult to move economically.

And electricity will only go up in cost due to taxation to fund transport infrastructure. The actual cost of production is falling as renewables replace fossil fuels.

The issues are still:
1) Produce H2 effieicnly from green energy.
2) Transport it in sufficient bulk that it is useable by either private consumers or industry.
3) The efficiency of fuel cells.

Whatever future technology is developed you’re still comparing against an electrical solution that’s going to have a couple of decades head start, better infrastructure already and with lower capex and opex (and from electrons at the power station to electrons at the motor is 80%+ efficient).

For commercial applications uptime is all important…like the most important thing. They can’t down tools while they wait for their digger, to recharge

Seems like an idea application for modular batteries TBH. JCB do (cheap tat stickered with their branding) that too.

If electricity goes up in price, so does hydrogen… unless you’re planning making hydrogen without electricity anytime soon.

No because the thing that will drive the cost of electricity up is not production costs (which will come down), but taxation. Thats the point. Governments need their tax dollars. Also we can produce hydrogen from excess electricity generated from wind turbines solar and other renewables even building in additional capacity to enable this. Once the wind blows the production of the electricity is free so you can either choose to chuck that energy into the grid or use it to produce hydrogen which can then be produced locally for local needs, so no need for massive global distribution infrastructure or big ‘hydrogen tankers’ sailing all over the world. You can have local hydrogen generation facilities providing hydrogen to a region.

Seems like an idea application for modular batteries TBH

Well not really. Batteries are not a sustainable or long term solution and not solving the principal problem. You have to mine shit out of the earths crust…the demand for the shit you need is going to increase as electricity replaces fossil fuels and the price of it will go up as the resources are depleted and the mining costs go up. As soon as you’ve depleted the easy to reach resources and have to start going deeper and further to get to new deposits then costs go up…then you have the political angle as we do with oil..having to deal with nations we might not want to because they have he right elemental deposits in their country…do you want to go to war with these countries in the name of climate change? Remember Gulf war 2?

Then you have to ship the shit all over the world through many different processes which are not kind to the environment and demand huge amounts of energy, then ship processed shit around the earth to manufacture batteries, then ship batteries around the globe to build into products then ship spent batteries around the globe for re-processeing which is also very energy intensive and polluting. So no different to searching for oil and gas in many ways – probably worse when you take the whole cradle to grave impact into consideration. The price of copper is already going through the roof as it’s getting more rare and in much higher demand, so add onto all that the other elements that are required you just compound the problem.

Then there is the energy density problem with batteries. There is no solution in sight for improving the energy density of batteries…not beyond very blue sky theoretical stuff. So probably centuries off if it is indeed even possible. If you want that 500 mile range on your BEV car…or want your digger to operate for a full shift on one charge then the energy density of batteries needs to be improved significantly. And we just have no idea how to do that right now. So many other far more promising technologies and solutions out there that are far more promising than putting all our eggs into the battery basket. The biggest problem the company I work for is not technology but which technology to focus on.

Really…the company I work for is spoiled for choice about which technologies to invest in….to make the right call now on technologies needed for 20 – 30 years down the line is hard. We cant invest in everything either financially or technically, but there are so many potential solutions out there that is not even making the mainstream media. The problem is alot of is requires the combination of many different industries so very few companies out there that have the capability in all the areas. It’s going to require alot of collaboration to develop the integrated solutions that we need.

Batteries provide a stop gap solution right now as we can deploy them quickly across many different areas…especially domestic…but they really are not the one and only answer for other industries or areas. That is going to require alot more long term and joined up thinking.

This is all being politically driven rather than technology driven….there is alot of promising tech out there, but it will take time to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Nobody has the answers…the politicians least of all…but it is being politically driven. Big business is well aware of the challenge and is working it. These companies are not about to go and tell their investors “You’ve got 20 years if you’re lucky then we’re toast”…they’re working tooth and nail to have a future.

^ that’s really interesting. But sadly, I do think we are toast 🙁

Also we can produce hydrogen from excess electricity generated from wind turbines solar and other renewables even building in additional capacity to enable this.

This seems optimistic. To swap all vehicles to EV is going to, give or take, double the UK demand on the grid (more for H2, less for BEV due to efficiencies). It’s going to be a rough ride getting enough renewable energy for our current needs let alone having excess to make hydrogen and charge everyones cars. Fingers crossed we start investing at the necessary levels soon…

This seems optimistic. To swap all vehicles to EV is going to, give or take, double the UK demand on the grid (more for H2, less for BEV due to efficiencies). It’s going to be a rough ride getting enough renewable energy for our current needs let alone having excess to make hydrogen and charge everyones cars. Fingers crossed we start investing at the necessary levels soon…

Turbines and indeed old and still working hydro is often switched off when the grid doesn’t need it, used on demand sort of thing, we have more capacity to produce electricity then we use currently, obviously the need is for more in the future to keep up with demand but wave is coming along in Scotland, the problem was always storage but producing free hydrogen might be a solution there.
I’m heartened that big industry is investing in this, they have to proper home work and get it right or they lose money.