The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[bilby]

Companies suggest the energy could also be used to produce hydrogen...

If I read one more person suggesting to use wind or solar to generate hydrogen (at a loss), I'm going to lose my mind. That is only useful when you have all of your electricity managed with green sources, like Costa Rica. I'm so tired of hearing about hydrogen. If industry wants to make their own hydrogen for industrial purposes, they can build their own mills or panels.

No. It's useful to produce hydrogen when all the current demand is satisfied by perishable sources even if you have fossil fuel use at other times.

Companies suggest the energy could also be used to produce hydrogen...

If I read one more person suggesting to use wind or solar to generate hydrogen (at a loss), I'm going to lose my mind. That is only useful when you have all of your electricity managed with green sources, like Costa Rica. I'm so tired of hearing about hydrogen. If industry wants to make their own hydrogen for industrial purposes, they can build their own mills or panels.

The whole hydrogen thing is a massive red herring; Hydrogen is a terrible vehicle fuel in so many ways. There's literally no situation where it makes more sense to produce hydrogen than to produce a more useful synthetic fuel, such as alcohols or hydrocarbons.

Hydrogen is a useful precursor for many chemicals and is easily produced from excess power without any need to power up/power down so it won't mind suddenly being cut off when the cloud goes in front of the sun. Just because it doesn't make a good fuel doesn't mean it doesn't have other uses.

As it stands now wind/solar sometimes gets idled because there's nothing to do with the capacity. Making hydrogen is a cheap (the plant is very cheap to build) way to make use of that effectively free power.

Generating electricity nobody needs is dumb; Mitigating that dumb by using the electricity nobody needs, to make hydrogen nobody wants, is probably not a particularly smart way to solve this problem.

There is nothing as useless as doing, with great efficiency, that which need not be done at all.

Particularly as the real problem, hiding behind all those times when wind and solar are generating needless electricity, is the times in between, when we need electricity, but wind and solar aren't generating enough.

Today, we solve that problem by burning fossil gas and coal. Which neatly eliminates wind and solar as workable solutions to the original problem we were trying to address - that we need to stop burning fossil fuels.

The only way yet demonstrated to achieve this is to use nuclear and hydroelectric generators. And once we start doing that, wind and solar are exposed as the futile waste of effort and money that they truly are*.





To be fair, a few percent of these is able to generate electricity in a genuinely profitable way; The problem is that profits decline rapidly as the proportion of these technologies approaches 10-15% of total generation, and become negative (unless subsidised) above that level, as the Germans are discovering to their very considerable cost.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Nobody wants hydrogen? Sez who!? As I posted some months ago, Texas has excellent wind resources, and large salt dome caverns that can be used to store hydrogen. Need some electricity on a high demand day? Tap the hydrogen reserves. Sweden and Japan are starting to create high quality steel factories using hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a good feed stock for the chemical industry. Now that Texas is beginning to lease off shore sites for windpower, Texas is beginning to move forward. See ya in 25 years.

 

[bilby]

Nobody wants hydrogen? Sez who!? As I posted some months ago, Texas has excellent wind resources, and large salt dome caverns that can be used to store hydrogen. Need some electricity on a high demand day? Tap the hydrogen reserves.

Hydrogen is difficult and dangerous to store. And with the exception of tiny niche applications such as spacecraft, where you already have a lot of hydrogen in cryogenic storage that you're able to tap into, it's never been used to generate electricity.

Hand waving isn't engineering. This stuff isn't easy, and therefore isn't cheap; But even if it were cheap and easy, it's not cost effective or safe.

It's a solution in search of a problem, and literally every problem that could be solved by using hydrogen can already be solved without using hydrogen.

And even if we were magically able to use hydrogen to do all kinds of wonderful things, it still doesn't change the fact that it's incredibly inefficient to make electricity when you don't need it, just so you can convert the energy to another form, store it somewhere (in hydrogen or somewhere else), and then convert it back into electricity when you need more electricity than you're generating.

Each step involves very significant losses; And the entire process is utterly pointless when we already have a way of just making what electricity we want, whenever we want it, with less pollution than is caused by wind turbines or solar panels; fewer deaths or injuries; less use of resources (so less mining, less refining, and less to dispose of at the end); less land use; and far less long distance transmission of electricity, with all the inefficiency that entails.

Creating ever more inefficient, ineffective, impractical and expensive concepts in a desperate effort to avoid admitting that our parents and grandparents were woefully wrong about nuclear power (understandable given their trauma from the Cold War, and the conflation, by propagandists on both sides, of nuclear power with nuclear weapons), is just dumb.

There's a way to make electricity with the lowest carbon emissions of any technology, more safely than any other technology, more reliably than any other technology, and with every single aspect of the waste stream totally managed to ensure zero harm to people or the environment, at a price that is competitive with fossil fuel (even after half a century of needless impositions from the fossil fuel and environmental lobbies to try to make it too expensive to use).

Why would anyone waste time and money looking for another, less efficient, way to achieve this already realised goal?

Is the N-word really that offensive to you?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Numerous companies are working on hydrogen to electrical storage systems to work in conjunction with wind or PV renewable energy systems. From home systems from outfits like Lavo to industrial sized systems by Siemans.

Google is your friend.

 

[bilby]

Numerous companies are working on hydrogen to electrical storage systems to work in conjunction with wind or PV renewable energy systems. From home systems from outfits like Lavo to industrial sized systems by Siemans.

Google is your friend.

"working on" something isn't the same as "have available and in current use", and certainly isn't "have made sufficiently inexpensive as to be useful".

Google can find me a stack of ideas that numerous companies are working on (in a vast number of arenas, not just energy storage) that are unlikely to ever be commercially viable. So what?

I ask again: Why would anyone waste time and money looking for another, less efficient, way to achieve this already realised goal?

I know that people are doing this dumb thing. I am asking why. (And it's a rhetorical question; The answer boils down to "because humans are stupid and irrational").

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Lavo has a home hydrogen system for homes with PV systems. They have A$1 billion in orders. There are several off the shelf systems for sale already to go with wind turbines. It is here already and ain't gonna stop. The next step is to bring costs down, and to develop large industrial systems. Pilot plants from Siemans are here already.

 

[Bomb#20]

The whole hydrogen thing is a massive red herring; Hydrogen is a terrible vehicle fuel in so many ways. There's literally no situation where it makes more sense to produce hydrogen than to produce a more useful synthetic fuel, such as alcohols or hydrocarbons.

 

[Learner]

Transforming Greenhouse Gases into Renewable Energy

Converting cow manure into renewable energy prevents harmful methane from reaching the atmosphere. This is important because methane on dairy farms accounts for the majority of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. If methane digesters were installed on most California dairies, they would protect the climate as much as taking more than one million cars off the road — about 5% of the state’s total.

The good news is that methane from dairy manure can be captured and converted into energy using existing technologies. The resulting biogas can be used to create:

• Renewable electricity
• Renewable vehicle fuel (biomethane)
• Renewable natural gas that can be can be injected into existing pipelines for a wide range of uses (heating, power plants).

Electricity from methane digesters on dairy farms can be used on site (thereby reducing the farmer’s energy costs), and the surplus can be sold to a public or private utility. The electricity can replace some power from fossil-fuel plants, which account for approximately 20% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The biogas from methane digesters can be refined to produce vehicle fuel, known as biomethane or “cow power.” The manure on California dairies could produce enough biomethane to power more than 100,000 vehicles. Dairy digesters can also reduce the risk of excess manure nutrients polluting waterways, including groundwater.

https://suscon.org/project/cow-power/

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hydrogen is a useful precursor for many chemicals and is easily produced from excess power without any need to power up/power down so it won't mind suddenly being cut off when the cloud goes in front of the sun. Just because it doesn't make a good fuel doesn't mean it doesn't have other uses.

As it stands now wind/solar sometimes gets idled because there's nothing to do with the capacity. Making hydrogen is a cheap (the plant is very cheap to build) way to make use of that effectively free power.

Generating electricity nobody needs is dumb; Mitigating that dumb by using the electricity nobody needs, to make hydrogen nobody wants, is probably not a particularly smart way to solve this problem.

There is nothing as useless as doing, with great efficiency, that which need not be done at all.

Why do you say that nobody wants it? Just because nobody wants it as fuel doesn't mean it isn't useful. Use it as an input to the Haber process and you get useful ammonia.

Particularly as the real problem, hiding behind all those times when wind and solar are generating needless electricity, is the times in between, when we need electricity, but wind and solar aren't generating enough.

Until we have good storage systems (and there's nothing in the pipeline that qualifies) there will be times wind/solar don't generate enough. And if you're going to be insane about it--a system that relies only on wind/solar/hydro actually produces more carbon than one that burns some natural gas. And it crashes the economy also.

The only way yet demonstrated to achieve this is to use nuclear and hydroelectric generators. And once we start doing that, wind and solar are exposed as the futile waste of effort and money that they truly are*.

I agree about nuke--but that's not a politically viable option at present.

And note that with nuke you still have an issue of making use of excess electricity--the additional cost of running a nuke plant full bore is minimal and might even be negative (the cost of the additional fuel being less than the cost of the wear of throttling up/down. Big machinery prefers to operate at a steady state.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The whole hydrogen thing is a massive red herring; Hydrogen is a terrible vehicle fuel in so many ways. There's literally no situation where it makes more sense to produce hydrogen than to produce a more useful synthetic fuel, such as alcohols or hydrocarbons.

And how does this want hydrogen production?

Hydrogen is bulky, space on subs is tight. Furthermore, all such subs are meant to go in harm's way--and a big tank of hydrogen is not what you want on such a vessel! Unlike civilian craft they are engineered to expect battle damage.

(Yes, you're going to say a torpedo will simply sink it, battle damage doesn't matter. A torpedo that hits will sink it--but if you fox a torpedo it might destruct. Not to mention that I expect that in the not too far future if not now there will be the concept of counter-torpedo fire. You don't actually need to hit it, just get close enough to kill it's sonar transducer.)

 

[Bomb#20]

And how does this want hydrogen production?

For the fuel cells. A lot longer underwater endurance than using batteries. The photo was of a Todaro-class in the Italian navy.

Hydrogen is bulky, space on subs is tight.

They store the hydrogen in the gap between the outer hull and the pressure hull. I'm pretty sure their naval architects took the density into account when they decided this was the right technology for their needs.

Furthermore, all such subs are meant to go in harm's way--and a big tank of hydrogen is not what you want on such a vessel! Unlike civilian craft they are engineered to expect battle damage.

(Yes, you're going to say a torpedo will simply sink it, battle damage doesn't matter. A torpedo that hits will sink it--but if you fox a torpedo it might destruct. Not to mention that I expect that in the not too far future if not now there will be the concept of counter-torpedo fire. You don't actually need to hit it, just get close enough to kill it's sonar transducer.)

Hey, I'm not Keith & Co.; it's not my field of expertise. But according to Wikipedia fifteen countries' navies have ordered fuel cell powered submarines or already have them in service. Don't tell me they're a bad idea -- tell them.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Transforming Greenhouse Gases into Renewable Energy

Converting cow manure into renewable energy prevents harmful methane from reaching the atmosphere. This is important because methane on dairy farms accounts for the majority of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. If methane digesters were installed on most California dairies, they would protect the climate as much as taking more than one million cars off the road — about 5% of the state’s total.

The good news is that methane from dairy manure can be captured and converted into energy using existing technologies. The resulting biogas can be used to create:

• Renewable electricity
• Renewable vehicle fuel (biomethane)
• Renewable natural gas that can be can be injected into existing pipelines for a wide range of uses (heating, power plants).

Electricity from methane digesters on dairy farms can be used on site (thereby reducing the farmer’s energy costs), and the surplus can be sold to a public or private utility. The electricity can replace some power from fossil-fuel plants, which account for approximately 20% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The biogas from methane digesters can be refined to produce vehicle fuel, known as biomethane or “cow power.” The manure on California dairies could produce enough biomethane to power more than 100,000 vehicles. Dairy digesters can also reduce the risk of excess manure nutrients polluting waterways, including groundwater.

https://suscon.org/project/cow-power/

So in other words, it won't make a difference and the cost on the environment to even put the system into place would likely be significant (forget the cost to the farmers). Why are people falling for gimmicks... oh wait... because they are gimmicks. I think more is being done regarding the feed to livestock to reduce emissions, but in the end... you have that much cattle, you get a great deal of methane.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Numerous companies are working on hydrogen to electrical storage systems to work in conjunction with wind or PV renewable energy systems. From home systems from outfits like Lavo to industrial sized systems by Siemans.

Google is your friend.

"Electrical storage systems"? You can't stuff a power plant into a battery.

The main problem with hydrogen... we are not remotely at a point where we can afford to transition green energy into something that isn't electricity for our grid. Ignoring the issues wind and solar have with 24/7 production, we would be robbing Mary to pay Paul to transition wind to electricity (at a loss) to hydrogen (even more loss). So I get suspicious when this huge green plan is sold and then they suggest giving the energy away to industry.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Lavo has a home hydrogen system for homes with PV systems. They have A$1 billion in orders. There are several off the shelf systems for sale already to go with wind turbines. It is here already and ain't gonna stop. The next step is to bring costs down, and to develop large industrial systems. Pilot plants from Siemans are here already.

link

It has a battery, so it is a Rube Goldberg backup system. Which is why it costs more than a Tesla backup system, because Tesla is just charging from the grid, Lavo adds a hydrogen process. Now, if it was able to run a home via electrolysis, that'd be something, but this thing is just awful! It takes the limitations of solar power, hydrogen, and battery storage and comes up with this Gumby sort of mess.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Hydrogen projects in Texas are already getting underway.

......
Texas clean energy megaprojects get underway

The state traditionally known for its fossil fuel industry is diversifying its energy production with green hydrogen, blue ammonia and solar builds.

Published Dec. 14, 2022
.....

Texas clean energy megaprojects get underway

The state traditionally known for its fossil fuel industry is diversifying its energy production with green hydrogen, blue ammonia and solar builds constructed by Bechtel and others.

www.utilitydive.com

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

In 5exas, renewable hydrogen power projects are already underway.

....
In September 2020, Frontier Energy, in partnership with the University of Texas-Austin and the DoE, launched the project in Texas to design, build and operate the state’s first dedicated renewable hydrogen network.

Supported by the DoE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, along with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the $10.8-million initiative is set to span three years, with half of funding allocated to boosting power grid resilience and spurring job creation. The model of the project generates zero-carbon hydrogen on site via electrolysis with solar and wind power, as well as reforms renewable gas from a local landfill. H2@Scale represents the first time that both sources of renewable hydrogen are utilized in the same project, and demonstrates the ability of renewable hydrogen to be cost-effective across several applications, including transportation and power generation.
......

Hydrogen: Top Three Texas-Based Initiatives

With a skilled workforce, abundant land availability and a long history of energy innovation, Texas is emerging as a global hub for hydrogen production, storage and distribution.

www.energycapitalpower.com

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In 5exas, renewable hydrogen power projects are already underway.

....
In September 2020, Frontier Energy, in partnership with the University of Texas-Austin and the DoE, launched the project in Texas to design, build and operate the state’s first dedicated renewable hydrogen network.

Supported by the DoE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, along with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the $10.8-million initiative is set to span three years, with half of funding allocated to boosting power grid resilience and spurring job creation. The model of the project generates zero-carbon hydrogen on site via electrolysis with solar and wind power, as well as reforms renewable gas from a local landfill. H2@Scale represents the first time that both sources of renewable hydrogen are utilized in the same project, and demonstrates the ability of renewable hydrogen to be cost-effective across several applications, including transportation and power generation.
......

Hydrogen: Top Three Texas-Based Initiatives

With a skilled workforce, abundant land availability and a long history of energy innovation, Texas is emerging as a global hub for hydrogen production, storage and distribution.

www.energycapitalpower.com

Why in the fucking hell would you use the electricity created by solar/wind to create Hydrogen to create electricity... when you could just use the electricity created by solar/wind and take the hydrogen out of the process altogether?!

 

[bilby]

How does spending ten million dollars "demonstrate the ability ... to be cost effective"?

This is (as usual) a way for the green lobby to extract money from the pockets of taxpayers.

"boosting power grid resilience" isn't a real thing; it's just doing the necessary maintenance of the power grid at taxpayer expense and pretending that it's part of some green initiative. (I have no problem with spending taxes on infrastructure, but they shouldn't lie about it. Maintaining the grid has nothing to do with making or using hydrogen).

"Spurring job creation" is usually just another way of saying "being inefficient". You could spur job creation by banning backhoes and making utility companies pay people to dig ditches with shovels. Or teaspoons. New technologies should put people out of work, freeing them to do something else with the wealth that is now generated by technology rather than labour.

Of course, this also requires that society transfer a part of the new wealth from the winners to the losers, something that the USA is particularly bad at doing. But that's a whole other can of worms, and out of scope for this discussion. Suffice to say that the current paradigm isn't a law of nature, and shouldn't be assumed to be permanent and immutable.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

In 5exas, renewable hydrogen power projects are already underway.

....
In September 2020, Frontier Energy, in partnership with the University of Texas-Austin and the DoE, launched the project in Texas to design, build and operate the state’s first dedicated renewable hydrogen network.

Supported by the DoE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, along with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the $10.8-million initiative is set to span three years, with half of funding allocated to boosting power grid resilience and spurring job creation. The model of the project generates zero-carbon hydrogen on site via electrolysis with solar and wind power, as well as reforms renewable gas from a local landfill. H2@Scale represents the first time that both sources of renewable hydrogen are utilized in the same project, and demonstrates the ability of renewable hydrogen to be cost-effective across several applications, including transportation and power generation.
......

Hydrogen: Top Three Texas-Based Initiatives

With a skilled workforce, abundant land availability and a long history of energy innovation, Texas is emerging as a global hub for hydrogen production, storage and distribution.

www.energycapitalpower.com

Why in the fucking hell would you use the electricity created by solar/wind to create Hydrogen to create electricity... when you could just use the electricity created by solar/wind and take the hydrogen out of the process altogether?!

Studies by University of Texas Found it is far cheaper to distribute hydrogen by pipeline than electricity from high voltage lines. If Texas gets large off shore wind farms how do you distribute enegy produced? The expensive way of the way that is half as expensive?

For more info, google - university of Texas, hydrogen pipeline vs high voltage line

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In 5exas, renewable hydrogen power projects are already underway.

....
In September 2020, Frontier Energy, in partnership with the University of Texas-Austin and the DoE, launched the project in Texas to design, build and operate the state’s first dedicated renewable hydrogen network.

Supported by the DoE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, along with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the $10.8-million initiative is set to span three years, with half of funding allocated to boosting power grid resilience and spurring job creation. The model of the project generates zero-carbon hydrogen on site via electrolysis with solar and wind power, as well as reforms renewable gas from a local landfill. H2@Scale represents the first time that both sources of renewable hydrogen are utilized in the same project, and demonstrates the ability of renewable hydrogen to be cost-effective across several applications, including transportation and power generation.
......

Hydrogen: Top Three Texas-Based Initiatives

With a skilled workforce, abundant land availability and a long history of energy innovation, Texas is emerging as a global hub for hydrogen production, storage and distribution.

www.energycapitalpower.com

Why in the fucking hell would you use the electricity created by solar/wind to create Hydrogen to create electricity... when you could just use the electricity created by solar/wind and take the hydrogen out of the process altogether?!

Studies by University of Texas Found it is far cheaper to distribute hydrogen by pipeline than electricity from high voltage lines. If Texas gets large off shore wind farms how do you distribute enegy produced? The expensive way of the way that is half as expensive?

For more info, google - university of Texas, hydrogen pipeline vs high voltage line

Okay, how can it be cheaper to pipe hydrogen in pipes that don't exist verses an electric grid that does exist?