Children and students is a big chunk
Anyone working part time and earning below the threshold
Disabled/unemployed
Stay at home mums/dads
Retired old folks.
That adds up to a lot of people
I'm all for electric cars but....
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Children and students is a big chunk
Anyone working part time and earning below the threshold
Disabled/unemployed
Stay at home mums/dads
Retired old folks.
That adds up to a lot of people
That's not what I'm arguing at all, but keep at it if you want.
What I'm pointing out is with current technology, and current cars available now a large proportion of families (not households, as many live on their own) could quite easily replace one of their cars with a current EV and have no issues with range or charging.
You're essentially taking my comment out of context and trying to fit it into a narrative you want it to be in.
About rhe same time we run out of carbon i guess
We wouldn't run out of Hydrogen... and hydrogen is coming much sooner than you think.
Have you ever driven past an onshore wind farm and wondered why the turbines are not spinning? It is not because there is no wind but because there is no additional load on the National Grid.
This is where energy storage is going to take off in a big way, one being battery storage where the current maximum capacity with todays technology is 20MW but, the other being Hydrogen generation.
When no additional generation is needed from renewables sources, instead of turning them off we can use the energy instead to create hydrogen, which will be used in fuel cells but also one day to replace the gas network too.
....we aren't going to run out of carbon either....
except that hydrogen is an appalling storage medium; massively wasteful to produce from electricity (most is produced chemically) very difficult to contain, gotta pressurise it, too which makes things more expensive.
for large scale power storage even molten salt is more efficient.
I think you are missing my point, regardless of being wasteful to produce from electricity or not, at this moment in time that electricity isn't being generated at all because the national grid cannot handle it without a demand for it.
Therefor using renewable energy sources to create hydrogen during low demand is better than not using it at all.
And once demand response kicks off more with the 'negowatt' there will be more 'spare' electricity from renewable energy sources.
not really, with the storage, production, transport etc, you end up at a point where its more expensive/wasteful to make the hydrogen than to have just turned the turbines off.
cause guess what if you want a hydrogen economy it aint gonna work with sporadic power gen, it will need base load continuous predictable production.
so if they did decide to make it electrically (not from oil/gas) it would end up being done by huge nuclear or coal power plants.
not turbines.
Looks like people/countries are already investing a lot of time, effort and money into this...
Siemens plans electrolysed system to store wind power as hydrogen
Siemens to deliver units to germany and switzerland
This is just the tip of the iceberg, and like I said, it is coming much quicker than you think.
Its an interesting point, regardless of if you think its a good idea or not.
The problem with a lot of renewable energy sources is they are sporadic, and out of our control. You can't just "turn the wind on" when demand rises, or "turn the sun on" at 2am.
So running your renewable sources all the time, whenever you can, and then storing that excess energy somehow to allow you to then release it when demand requires it makes sense. Obviously there is debate about how you store it (hydrogen, batteries, etc), but the concept itself is a sensible one. It would allow peak output of the Grid to exceed the input capacity of it.
The problem with a lot of renewable energy sources is they are sporadic, and out of our control. You can't just "turn the wind on" when demand rises, or "turn the sun on" at 2am.
So running your renewable sources all the time, whenever you can, and then storing that excess energy somehow to allow you to then release it when demand requires it makes sense. Obviously there is debate about how you store it (hydrogen, batteries, etc), but the concept itself is a sensible one. It would allow peak output of the Grid to exceed the input capacity of it.
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I would rather phrase it as "the national grid is being supplied by a mix of nuclear and fossil power stations that do the job far more efficiently and the wind turbine is sitting idle because it's too unreliable to depend on and pointless to run if you can't." It's only there because of subsidies paid by the compulsory additions to our utility bills.
I loathe wind power even more than I love hydrogen fuel cells.
This bit I agree with very much, except nuclear is a very much superior energy source for hydrogen than renewables for two reasons: plentiful supply of hot water (making electrolysis far more efficient by about 25%) and because, well, nuclear power is a great deal more efficient and reliable than wind power.
Hydrogen isn't just a storage medium, it's a transport medium. Good luck ferrying molten salt around to everybody's family cars. And as a storage medium it has an efficiency equivalent to batteries but is far more energy dense. I don't know why you say "even molten salt", btw. Molten salt is one of the best ways to store energy short of pumping water up hill (which is a very situational solution).
I also don't know why you consider storage of hydrogen so problematic. Certainly there are challenges but certainly those challenges can also be overcome. Unless you think the hydrogen vehicles on sale right now somehow haven't solved it.
Good. Now we're agreeing again. Wind doesn't provide a base load with continuous predictable production. However, nuclear power does. In spades.
That's the idea. Right now we have hydrogen produced from methane. But the beauty of HFCs is that you can also produce hydrogen from clean sources which allow a smooth transition to HFC vehicles. Batteries are currently charged from fossil fuels too with the same rationale - that you can shift the energy sources to a clean one later on.
Agreed. If we have to have wind power might as well produce hydrogen from it until people come to their senses.
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And this is where managing our demand better comes in to play too. Energy suppliers will eventually have to come up with new tariffs, so instead having a cheaper tariff at night because the demand is less, you will have a cheaper tariff during the day so solar farms can keep exporting.
Good Energy and Open Utility have come up with an interesting eBay style energy market place called Piclo, worth a read
Yeah, you start to move towards the concept of "electricity futures", where you could generate electricity now, but not actually use it for hours, days, or even weeks/months. How you would then price that becomes... complicated 
Don't get me wrong I'm all for Nuclear but, with the ongoing issues around Hinckley Point C it isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Tidal lagoon power is also looking very interesting but expensive too.
Swansea tidal lagoon is effectively a 320MW trial site and if all goes well Cardiff tidal lagoon will produce 2,8GW which isn't too far off HPC at 3,2GW.
Okay, apologies if I was aggressive. I tend to get frustrated in discussions on this.
That's all I'm really after. I too often see hydrogen dismissed with vague assertions that it's "too difficult to store" or "significantly less efficient than batteries" without that being backed up. So I thought I'd bring in some numbers. I agree it's from 2009 - I noted that myself. But at least I'm bringing some numbers to this. Anyone else is welcome to bring their own facts and figures or challenge mine. I wont mind.
Yes, the paper does bring in the weight of batteries as an important factor. But I think that's fair because this is an important factor. HFC vehicles scale. Battery vehicles do not. It's why you can have a battery-powered bicycle to get you up those hills but the same approach would be problematic for a lorry. Not because you just need a larger battery, but because it's not a simple linear progression of lorry = n bicycles, therefore you need a battery of size n. This is because the energy density of batteries current or foreseeable, is a lot lower than hydrogen. So hydrogen scales whilst batteries do not. (Obviously it's not a true linear progression with hydrogen either, but with energy density so much greater, the curve of increased weight vs. energy stored is a lot flatter).
Skepticism is always healthy. I have no problem with that. But I'd like specific counters of newer / better figures rather than dismissal because these are valid facts and figures. I was responding to your comment that hydrogen was "significantly" less efficient and I've shown that in 2009 at least, that was not the case.
No, I don't mean that. That would be insane. By producing hydrogen at the power source, I mean producing it at power plants so that hydrogen production is centralized and gains in efficiency. As opposed to people having a hydrogen converter in their garage (would work, but is needlessly inefficient) or at a fuelling station (more feasible than the home solution, but again inferior to producing it at the power station).
In fact, I'm glad you brought this up. A lot has been made of the fact that hydrogen is currently most cheaply produced from methane. You can make it cost effectively by electrolysis but just like petrol is still cheaper than batteries, this source is still cheaper than electrolysis. So market forces mean we get it from methane. But here's the thing. People here seem to have been treating this as equivalent to petrol because they think "it's still fossil fuels". Well modern power stations (at least in Europe) have a lot of technology in place to capture carbon and put out fewer pollutants. Yes, it's still derived from fossil fuels a lot of the time but that is a HELL of a lot cleaner and more efficient than everybody doing the conversion in their own small portable internal combustion engine. So hydrogen is an immediate major environmental step forward that still provides the same clean forward path that batteries do.
You misread what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the fuel, I'm talking about the vehicle. The Windows 10 comparison isn't about an electricity bill to run your computer. It's about your ownership becoming a managed service rather than fully owned.
Maybe. I guess time will tell. One important point though is that whilst the model you propose is perfectly plausible and may be the way things go: i.e. battery vehicles for the shorter A-B with lighter loads and hydrogen to cover the problem spaces that those vehicle's can't (long distance, haulage, off-road); there's an important factor here which is that hydrogen vehicles can also cover the use case of the battery vehicles as well. So you're proposing an outcome where one technology can handle scenario A and another technology can handle scenario B as well as A.. So why have both?
You said most families will have two cars. I pointed out that's a massive increase in the number of cars we currently have. I think that's a fair point.
I don't think that's what I'm doing. You used your idea of most families having two cars as a counter-point to someone saying that battery cars had limited range. I wasn't attacking your point as an isolated fact, I was disputing it as a legitimate counterpoint to someone's criticism of battery vehicles. Which I think is correct. Most families will not have two cars.
Yeah, you start to move towards the concept of "electricity futures", where you could generate electricity now, but not actually use it for hours, days, or even weeks/months. How you would then price that becomes... complicated
Are you talking about how you price it wholesale? Yeah, that could get complicated. But if you're talking about how you price it to the end consumer, that's as simple as it's ever been: "As high as we can get away with before the peasants stop working".
Are you talking about how you price it wholesale? Yeah, that could get complicated. But if you're talking about how you price it to the end consumer, that's as simple as it's ever been: "As high as we can get away with before the peasants stop working".
Haha, true
Possibly not for us. Meanwhile India and China are merrily building away. India has a working Thorium PoC reactor and should have a commercially operating one by the end of this year. They're planning to have 50+ reactors operating by 2025.
Meanwhile our government is trying to find ways to block human rights investigations in Saudi Arabia lest they decide to change the price of oil again.
Assuming HFCVs can hit price parity with BEVs, assuming we can produce, transport and store Hydrogen in a way that rivals the energy efficiency of a pure electric model, assuming we produce Hydrogen via electrolysis rather than from methane and can get the cost down way below the EU 2025 target of £4.32/kg, there's no reason why BEVs are needed at all.
When do you think we'll be at that point? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? BEVs are less than five years away from going mass market. You can already buy a BEV cheaply and drive it as your main vehicle. There is a huge amount of money being spent on infrastructure to support millions of EVs next decade.
Hydrogen is nowhere right now and is highly likely to miss the window of opportunity. Everything being equal, Hydrogen would probably win. But unless something drastic changes, HFCVs are going to arrive too late to make any waves. Instead, I expect Fuel Cells (maybe Hydrogen, maybe something else) will pick up the slack in the areas where batteries are deficient; haulage, freight, flight.
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You know I'm still waiting for you to explain that diagram you posted which has a couple of very major flaws in it. If you're basing your assumptions above on information like this, then your assumptions are going to be off.
You can buy HFC vehicles in the UK right now. For example the Toyota Mirai. Before you reach for your keyboard and tell me that they're expensive, I'll point out they're about the same prices as a Tesla S, so if you're going to criticize on price you're criticizing battery cars as well. What's that? Battery vehicles will come down in price? So are HFCVs. How you get "Hydrogen is nowhere right now" from there being actual commercially available HFCVs, I don't know.
The diagram I posted is out of date, published in 2006. There's little public information on where Hydrogen Fuel Cells are at now, and it would be unfair to reference a 10 year old document.
The Toyota Mirai isn't a commercially viable project; it's sold at a huge loss in order to hit that £50k price tag. Toyota only expect to sell 30,000 HFCVs this decade. There are 6(?) places in the UK capable of refueling the Mirai currently. This is where BEVs were 10 years ago; expensive cars, very few models, incredibly limited infrastructure. So yes, I would say HFCVs are essentially 'nowhere' right now. When that will change is anyone's guess, but clearly Toyota don't expect a sudden success, otherwise they'd be forecasting higher sales. I'd place money on HFCV sales not taking off for at least another decade.
There are 115 Tesla Superchargers in the UK alone, with another ~450 rapid chargers spread throughout this country. The government have put up a large pot of cash to install more rapid chargers until there is at least one unit on every 20 miles of A road. As for sales, Tesla expect to sell 500,000 BEVs per year worldwide by 2020. BMW expect to sell 100,000 per year. Renault-Nissan expect to hit 1.5 million EVs sold by 2020. There will be millions of EVs on the road by the end of the decade, with infrastructure to support them.
That isn't an insubstantial gap. Tesla could be the world's largest BEV manufacturer by 2020 and they are forecasting to sell more BEVs in a month than Toyota's entire five year HFCV forecast.
Can I ask an important question? Before moving ahead with HFCV, doesn't there need to be some degree of consensus over the format the fuel will take? I genuinely don't know if this has happened or not yet, but having infrastructure for both liquid and compressed hydrogen would seem incredibly wasteful. BEVs have been through this with AC vs DC and various different connectors, though it is largely resolved now (the assumption being that Renault will move to DC next generation). With hydrogen though, isn't resolving that debate likely to be far more disruptive and expensive if it isn't settled early on?
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I'm specifically talking about one number that I know from past work. To get some examples just look at the wiki page on CCGT, it gives a seimens system that has an efficiency of 61%. I know the one we were looking at was around that as well. The other numbers I don't know, which is why I didn't specifically pick up on them but said they may be low as well.
While many modern power stations have carbon reducing systems lets not confuse this with Carbon Sequestration and Storage systems, which are currently not commercially viable unfortunately. To be carbon neutral you need to have a CSS system, which currently is unlikely. In 20 years, hopefully there will be more examples and it will become standard in new places that emit carbon. Problem is it's horrendously expensive as it's not just the system at the power station but the pipelines (expensive steel because of the carbon dioxide) and the system to inject it into the reservoir.
The reality is, unless we have some kind of breakthrough, if we want to use hydrogen as an environmentally sensitive fuel/storage then we will need to move away from methane and move towards water/nuclear as a means of producing hydrogen.
On where it's produced. I can see there being lots of places where the local generation of hydrogen occurs. Perhaps not in the UK as we could cheaply tank it around, but places where it is most likely to be needed - Australian Outback, Africa etc. A system attached to a set of solar panels and a water well, perhaps privately owned or for outback refuelling places.
Still not sure what you're really getting at. Electric cars are not going to be any more proprietary/managed than hydrogen or potentially ICE.
They probably can but I'm guessing one word will cover that.
Cost.
I'm willing to bet electric will be cheaper than hydrogen. The cost of the vehicle may possibly be cheaper (questionable) but the cost of fuel will certainly be significantly cheaper for an electric car. If you don't need the benefits of hydrogen over electric then why pay more? It's the same reason diesel has become so popular over the last decade. Petrol engines are arguably "better" (performance and noise) but diesel is cheaper to run (or at least seen that way).
No, I'm not arguing for an increase in cars. I'm pointing out (again) that most families could easily swap their second car for an EV and not see any negativity from it. I'm not arguing about households with one car getting a second.
You, like Skeeter seem to be overly negative to EV. You mentioned previously about people seeming to be unduly negative about hydrogen. You appear to be falling into the trap with EV.
There are issues with EV, but so are there issues with hydrogen. It's why research is ongoing. As it is already 90+% of the people could swap their car out tomorrow and not have range issues with EV. It's why things aren't going to change overnight for either hydrogen or EV. We are talking 20-30 years to migrate from ICE to the next generation, and even then I'm guessing that will only be new cars, there will still be plenty of ICE cars.
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