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A Fully Distributed Power Grid?
rleyton writes "There's an interesting and topical black-out article on an "internet inspired" hydrogen powered energy network. The premise is homes, cars, factories and offices store up hydrogen when energy is available, and supply it into the new energy network when it's not. Certainly an intriguing idea, with some interesting comments on future power management. Feasible in the next "three decades"? Perhaps."
We live in wood frame houses. We have natural gas appliances, propane barbecue grills, and cars with 20 gallon gasoline fuel tanks. I don't think a compressed hydrogen tank would be any more dangerous.
We are all living through the nightmares of security problems brought in by the internet, do we take that along too?
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Ah, yes, the old Hindenburg chestnut. Are we cursed forever to avoid using the single most commmon element in the universe, one that will burn clean, simply because someone burned a balloon with it once decades ago?
As for the distributed side of this argument, I've thought it was a good idea for years. Whether or not we do it with hydrogen, we need to do it. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of...wait, let me start that again. Imagine every house's roof covered not with wood shake, or spanish tile, or what-have-you, but with photovoltaic cells. Now imagine that people's cars run on domestically-produced hydrogen. And when I say "domestic", I mean "in the household". Produced by electrolysis, in your own house, using electricity from your (and your neighbors', and everyone else's on the grid) rooftop photovoltaics plus water from your tap. Storage plants run electrolysis too, storing hydrogen for nighttime, when they burn it again and send the power back out again.
Now compare that to our current state of affairs: the vast majority of our electricity coming from coal or gas, much of it imported; our cars running on gasoline, almost all of it imported.
Now try and tell me it doesn't make sense to switch.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The idea being presented here is exactly what you are talking about. It's not using hydrogen as the source, just as a storage mechanism. So, when the big generator is working, you can electrolyze water and fill your hydrogen tank. When the big generator dies, you and all your neighbors power yourselves, or even pump power into the grid.
The hydrogen you use could also come from catalyzing natural gas at your end, or by using non-grid power to crack water.
The advantage over gasoline and propane is that you can make it yourself. Just TRY to find an easy way to refill your gasoline tank using only electricity (or for extra credit, sunlight or wind) and water. With hydrogen, you're off and running.
To sum it all up-- hydrogen is best thought of as a storage method, not a fuel. And the processes by which you can get it are simple enough to perform in your house, using the two most common power sources already present, natural gas and electricity.
Of course, I don't see anything like this happening nationwide any time soon, either. But it's the sort of thing I'd like to have around the house. A huge UPS for everything!
Just to repeat this... hydrogen in a setup like this is NOT A POWER SOURCE. What they are describing is essentially a great big UPS for your house that uses hydrogen as a battery. When your power is running, you crack water and fill your tank. When your power dies, you use your fuel cell and your hydrogen tank to run your house.
Other sources for "charging your hydrogen battery" are catalyzing natural gas, or using your SuperHippie 3000 Solar Panel Array to do it without having to mess with the grid.
One more time, and I will also exhort you to THINK!... the power still comes from where it does now. Hydrogen is the storage mechanism not the power source.
And why hydrogen over, say, gasoline or propane? Because you can't make gasoline out of water and sunlight.