Solar-Hydrogen Eco-House

Cymage writes "An architect in Malaysia has built a Solar-Hydrogen Eco-house, the first in the world that is fully self-sustainable and runs entirely on hydrogen. The house has an electrolyser to generate hydrogen that runs off of solar panels, then that hydrogen is used for heat and electricity for the house. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder how long before a kit is ready to convert regular houses?"

Comments

Cost of transforming energy?

[WegianWarrior]

There is no way to have 100% effecency in transforming energy from one from to the other - so we have a loss from transforming sunlight to electricity, and then a loss transforming the electricity to a storable chemical (hydrogen), and then yet another loss as it's transfered back to electricity to run the house. Sounds like they are wasting power by having unnecesary steps here...

Now, I'm not a rocketscientist, and I dont research fuelscells and batteries - but would it not been just as efficient, or even more efficient, to just store the electricity in a batterybank? Unlike in a car, weight and to a certain degree volume isn't a limiting factor in a house.

Re:Cost of transforming energy?

[merlin_jim]

Now, I'm not a rocketscientist, and I dont research fuelscells and batteries - but would it not been just as efficient, or even more efficient, to just store the electricity in a batterybank? Unlike in a car, weight and to a certain degree volume isn't a limiting factor in a house.

It's all about cost and energy density. The energy density in hydrogen is far greater than that of a similarly sized battery bank. And while a fuel cell is expensive, so are batteries. The difference being that this house can add extra energy storage just by installing an extra tank. To do that with batteries you've gotta buy a whole bunch more batteries.

That and batteries are cranky, require special circuitry, can vent harmful and corrosive substances (unignited hydrogen is neither harmful nor corrosive), and require replacing every 5-7 years in an application like this. And battery electrolyte can't directly power heaters, stoves, or air conditioners...

Re:Solar power is great, PV cells are not

[WOV]

All right! I *knew* someone would trot out the "solar panels take more energy" schtick! This is great; it's practically the only time I get to get modded up to insightful. Ahem.

They just updated this peer-reviewed survey study: (PDF) from the national laboratories. Short version? Worst case payback is 3.75 years from a system that will last 30 years. (A coal or natural gas combined cycle power plant, by the way, has about the same energy payback - they don't spring fully formed from the soil.)

This is not to denigrate the Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies you spoke of; they're promising central station power. Check DOE's CSP page for more info there. But read up before you dismiss photovoltaics out of hand.