Two Hydrogen Fuel stations Explode June 2019

Lumen

Mickeroo wrote: »

That is what's called a logical fallacy.

I disagree, it's about elasticity of demand w.r.t price and convenience.

Electric cars are nicer to drive and cheaper to run and so will tend to be used more.

If we ever get self-driving electric cars the roads will be almost permanently gridlocked as people spend 3 hours being driven to the office whilst working in the back of the Johnnycab, have a couple of meetings, lunch, then go home again.

timsey tiger

liamog wrote: »

I see the future as Hydrogen for big transport, and batteries for small transport.

I did agree with this as I had understood that fuel cells were relatively bulky and not particularly suited to passenger vehicles. Then on the bbc saw this article about hydrogen fuel cell powered drones, which I guess means that the size constraints seem to be sorted.

However, I guess the economic factors are compelling bevs are just cheaper to run and have the head start. I can't see hydrogen winning this one. Anyway no industry is beyond dirty tricks who wants to buy a hindenburg that you won't be allowed drive in tunnels. ( I just made this up, based on reading something on the channel tunnel website about gas powered vehicles not being allowed, then generalised. This is the sort of sh1t we are dealing with)

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50841104

Rafal

ELM327 wrote: »

If you carry 200kWh of electricity to complete your journey as a bus driver, you will need 600kWh of H2 to create that energy, and another 400kWh to make up for the lesser efficiency of travel using a hydrogen fool cell (due to lower thermal efficiency)

So that makes 200kWh of electricity or 1gWh of electricity to use H2. Which will be only refuelled at the depot anyway.

I did not know of the 1:5 ratio in energy requirements of hydrogen vehicles. Are you taking into account the cost of producing electricity too? Hydrogen can be produced by means other than electrolysis.

By the way, do you mean 1 MWh or 1 GWh? 1,000 kWh = 1 MWh. 1,000,000 kWh = 1 GWh (uppercase G, not g).

ELM327

Rafal wrote: »

I did not know of the 1:5 ratio in energy requirements of hydrogen vehicles. Are you taking into account the cost of producing electricity too? Hydrogen can be produced by means other than electrolysis.

By the way, do you mean 1 MWh or 1 GWh? 1,000 kWh = 1 MWh. 1,000,000 kWh = 1 GWh (uppercase G, not g).

I meant MWh in that case, I was sure it went the other way. Apologies.




Currently (and the only future proof renewable way) to produce H2 is by electrolysis. If you need electricity anyway then you expend the same energy to generate electricity for propulsion or for generating hydrogen.
Ergo.. instead of 1:3, it's 2:4 - allowing "1" as the constant to reflect energy spent generating electricity.

The 1:5 represents both additional costs of energy to create and burn hydrogen, as well as the less efficiency achieved by FCEV to BEV

Lumen

In Norway the EV:fast charger ratio is about 1:100 and ICE:filling station ratio is about 1:1500.

Assuming H2 cars need refuelling the same as ICE cars, that means H2 stations can be around 15x as expensive as a single DC fast charger and make sense commercially.

I've seen costs of $1m-3m for an H2 filling station, so let's pick the midpoint at 1.5m. Does a DC fast charger around $100k?

Pretty much.

DC fast Networked 50 kW One $28,401
DC fast Networked 150 kW One $75,000
DC fast Networked 350 kW One $140,000

Source: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_EV_Charging_Cost_20190813.pdf

So, in theory the costs of filling infrastructure (excluding the grid/tankers) ought to be cost competitive.

There are around 15,000 DC fast chargers on the Tesla Supercharger network alone, providing equivalent H2 capacity ought to only cost $1.5bn. That's peanuts to the fossil industry.

But are they going to do it?

liamog

That EV to fast charger ratio is very high, long term you'll need less rapid chargers per EV.

Assuming that an EV needs to be charged twice as often as ICE/H2 (half the range), then we need double the chargers, charging takes 6 times longer (30 mins instead of 5 mins), then we need 12x the chargers, but 85% of charging is done at home/work. So we need approx 1.8 times as many rapid chargers as we do fuel pumps.

So you're break even point is 1 H2 station at 1.5m versus 2 DC chargers at 750k each.

JohnC.

https://electrek.co/2020/01/16/vw-ceo-says-company-will-cut-work-on-fuel-cells-to-accelerate-battery-evs/

Now VW cutting fuel cell development and diverting that money to EVs and self-driving.

pdpmur

As an addendum to the comparison between Nokia and Apple, Iphone sales are declining and Apple is currently in the process of shifting emphasis towards being a services provider. So even the most successful companies have to keep reinventing themselves as competitors nibble at their heels.