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How Orkney Leads the Way For Sustainable Energy (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: It seems the stuff of fantasy. Giant ships sail the seas burning fuel that has been extracted from water using energy provided by the winds, waves and tides. A dramatic but implausible notion, surely. Yet this grand green vision could soon be realised thanks to a remarkable technological transformation that is now under way in Orkney. Perched 10 miles beyond the northern edge of the British mainland, this archipelago of around 20 populated islands -- as well as a smattering of uninhabited reefs and islets -- has become the centre of a revolution in the way electricity is generated.
Orkney was once utterly dependent on power that was produced by burning coal and gas on the Scottish mainland and then transmitted through an undersea cable. Today the islands are so festooned with wind turbines, they cannot find enough uses for the emission-free power they create on their own. Community-owned wind turbines generate power for local villages; islanders drive nonpolluting cars that run on electricity; devices that can turn the energy of the waves and the tides into electricity are being tested in the islands' waters and seabed; and -- in the near future -- car and passenger ferries here will be fuelled not by diesel but by hydrogen, created from water that has been electrolysed using power from Orkney's wind, wave and tide generators.
Orkney was once utterly dependent on power that was produced by burning coal and gas on the Scottish mainland and then transmitted through an undersea cable. Today the islands are so festooned with wind turbines, they cannot find enough uses for the emission-free power they create on their own. Community-owned wind turbines generate power for local villages; islanders drive nonpolluting cars that run on electricity; devices that can turn the energy of the waves and the tides into electricity are being tested in the islands' waters and seabed; and -- in the near future -- car and passenger ferries here will be fuelled not by diesel but by hydrogen, created from water that has been electrolysed using power from Orkney's wind, wave and tide generators.
"they cannot find enough uses for the emission-free power they create on their own." Exactly the right idea, use that surplus zero-footprint energy and create something that can replace a footprint need elsewhere.
You are so fucking stupid you are lowering the quality of the conversation just by having a slashdot account
"As a conservative republican, I am for using nature's natural resources to power humanities future." - Did you mean "humanity's future" or are you... uneducated generally, blathering above your pay grade?
"Democrats seem to have a fundamental hatred of humanity and think anything people do is inherently evil." - If you think yourself such a skilled liar, why not invent some way out for Trump that doesn't involve life in prison?
He'd really be grateful for your masterminding his PR from now on, Sarah is so tired... so very tired.
I'm not sure about using it on a ferry, but for cars it doesn't really make sense compared to electricity, especially on an island.
If everyone harvested the wind and the waves, there'd be no wind and waves. This solution simply does not scale.
Adding turbines would reduce the load on non-renewable energy, a net positive. In fact, the Altamont pass in the East Bay Area is a very well-utilized wind farm that could easily be expanded.
You probably haven't studied this in any real depth in order to determine if it's feasible either way, so to pretend either way is kind of foolish on its face. All we do know is more turbines = less need for burning.
Migrating birds are an issue, but new "pinwheel" style turbine designs mitigate bird impacts considerably. There is room for improvement from burning anything just to get household AC, regardless of your under-founded doubts.
How much vs cost, that's another consideration, but in places where renewable resources are being completely uncollected and there's high local need, it is patently foolish to rule something out without even considering it.
No
Hydrogen is a way of storing energy the same as a battery. Today batteries are better in every possible way except possibly air travel. Hydrogen is dangerous, hard to store and hard to transport. Again, except possibly for air travel, hydrogen is either expensive or less efficient to turn back into mechanical energy.
"If everyone harvested the wind and the waves, there'd be no wind and waves. This solution simply does not scale." - BWAAHAHAHAHAHA, omg, that was fucking great. Do these Republican retards all play Andy Kaufman 24/7?
What the actual fuck! If it's not smart enough to be self-aware can it still be hilarious, or am I laughing at an actual retard and should be ashamed?
Put in large systems that run off the currents in the ocean that fill up tanks full of hydrogen so that automated ships can come dock with them and move the hydrogen around? Sounds like a great idea to me. I'm glad they thought of this.
--
“Time and tide for nae man bide” – Unknown
Hydrogen becomes electrical energy quite easily and efficiently compared to burning anything, you should have quit at saying it's dangerous and bulky. It's also carbon neutral. Compared to gasoline it's just less dense and 1000% cleaner.
Dangerous, toxic gasoline is burned everywhere as the current model. Keep thinking, see if you get anywhere.
But they offload their excess energy to norway who can regulate with hydropower.
Hydrogen seems nice, but I see bigger potential for the US navy synthetic fuel, easier to transport and can be used in current engines.
It means no fortnite for you
Hydrogen is a way of storing energy the same as a battery. Today batteries are better in every possible way except possibly air travel. Hydrogen is dangerous, hard to store and hard to transport. Again, except possibly for air travel, hydrogen is either expensive or less efficient to turn back into mechanical energy.
True, but the reason hydrogen storage is still interesting is that the storage capacity you can achieve with hydrogen based completely dwarfs anything you can achieve with batteries, hydro storage or practically anything else at the moment. The round trip efficiency is currently between 30-40 %, it can realistically be increased to 50% in the near future. If you recover the stored energy by burning the hydrogen in in a combined cycle gas power plant the efficiencies is as high as 60%.
I'm not against wind turbines per se, but believing that they can be used everywhere as effectively as the British Isles is a bit of wishful thinking. When isn't the British coast windy after all?
Certainly they'd be useful on the US coasts (where a good portion of the population helpfully is), but not all geographic locations are like that.
Ditto for solar: great bit of kit that should be deployed in more places, but some areas get less sun that others.
More of both, but let's be realistic as to where these things can be useful and on whether they can solve all of our energy problems.
This Hydrogen fuel is for three possibilities:
1. Battery.
2. Propulsion engine as from the rockets and planes's reactors.
3. Combustion engine as from the cars and trucks.
Hydrogen has about 142 MJ per kg, about 3X that of diesel and gasoline. Which themselves are about 25X that of LiPo batteries (the best, mass-producible rechargeable batteries out there). Making hydrogen about 75X the energy density of the best battery packs. Batteries are terrible for aerospace uses, and even for vehicles where hydrogen could be recharged in a matter of a few minutes, requires a LOT less mass for motion (meaning more efficient and easier on the roads), and simpler to build (as you can use a fuel cell and then drive electric motors). Why would you want to carry around 800 kg of batteries when you could do 12 kg of hydrogen? The weight savings in terms of wear-and-tear on roads and tires is massive.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Hydrogen, when produced by green energy, is green
Batteries are not, ever. They are awful as a matter of fact.
Not a word too many. Not a word wasted.
You could use it as a heating/household gas too with different infrastructure. On the island that makes perfect sense. No need for propane which is mostly Hydrogen anyway.
Does this mean that we no longer have to genocide 2 billion people to fight climate change?
1) Genocide is NOT A VERB, you cretin.
2) You're on the list, by virtue of your low intellect.
"Harvesting 100% renewable can't even dent the energy budget of the planet" - Said the insane nutter into his meth stash? You have no concept. The latent heat of the Earth's mantle could produce more energy than all of humanity, forever.
A single solar panel array just a few miles on a side in the middle of Arizona could easily replace half of all US burned-power consumption. You simply don't understand math or scale, like the OP +5 funny idiot who wasn't kidding either.
Hail Ars!
Hmmm could you sum that up for the idiotards?
Hydrogen has about 142 MJ per kg, about 3X that of diesel and gasoline. Which themselves are about 25X that of LiPo batteries (the best, mass-producible rechargeable batteries out there). Making hydrogen about 75X the energy density of the best battery packs.
Except that the same mass of hydrogen takes up a HECK of a lot more volume.
And once you factor in the mass of the containers and other hardware needed to secure hydrogen, the advantage per mass is no longer as clear either.
Aluminum air battery tech is coming online. I (religiously) believe the real innovation will be in nano-capacitor arrays that are solid state heat sinks themselves. This is expensive tech now but once built could last indefinitely.
Certainly much, much better than chemical bar/plate batteries of today.
Hydrogen goes in a tank. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_hydrogen Yeah there's a valve too, good eye. It's pressurized and liquefied, that power comes from the turbines. You're not getting this somehow.
A tank can replace a conventional current tech battery and have weight savings left over. Will this always be true, unknown, but aluminum air batteries are not widespread yet and graphene capacitor arrays are still fictional.
So for now hydrogen isn't a bad solution, much like natural gas / gasoline only - you can get it anywhere, it's much cleaner, no exhausted deposits, no drilling or leaking insulating methane atmospherically to get it, etc etc etc.
Read more arth.
Just liquify hydrogen. In order to do that we need massive quantities of coal. If people die in lots of liquid hydrogen explosions, that just decreases the number of evil human beings on the planet.
The surest way to make the world carbon nuetral is to kill of all the evil people, who only want to fight
Thanks for correcting this egregious spelling mistake. Poor spelling does not change the fundamental fact that 7 billion human beings will have a affect on the planet.
Go humanity. Donald Trump and I love you. No amount of hatred you throw our way will change that. Let's build windmills. Let's build PV. Let's build the safe clean nuclear reactors that will power humanities destiny in space.
I wonder how long the Democrats will take before they realize that when you fester entire islands with windmills you are in fact changing the wind
There are two solutions to this problem:
1. For every turbine erected, cut down a tree, so the total wind blockage remains constant. Ban the planting of new trees.
2. Force Republicans to learn enough math and science so they don't look like idiots when they think these turbines will have a non-negligible effect on the exawatts of power in the North Atlantic trade winds.
The hydrogen-based batteries are very useful for an electrical grid of wind turbines and solar panels.
These batteries are not too dangerous because they are located on the desert.
The problem is the electrodes in sulphuric acid: they are expensive and hydrocorrosive.
I do hope you find that shred of integrity some day. Truly.
The fact-checks behind 'The Daily Show's' 50 Fox news 'lies' By Lauren Carroll, Aaron Sharockman on Thursday, February 26th, 2015 at 3:00 p.m.
The Daily Show posted a Vine Wednesday titled, "50 Fox News lies in 6 seconds." We’ve fact-checked almost all of the statements they cited. For the record, we originally counted 49 claims, not 50. The Daily Show said No. 50 was left off due to a technical error. They've updated their Vine, which we've included here.
* * *
1. "In July 2010 the government said small businesses -- 60 percent -- will lose their health care, 45 percent of big business and a large percentage of individual health." Sean Hannity, Nov. 11, 2013 False
* * *
2. "And President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture out of his own pocket, yet it's the Republican National Committee who's paying for this." Anna Kooiman, Oct. 5, 2013 https://bit.ly/2W1wHzv
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3. Labor union president Andy Stern is "the most frequent visitor" at the White House. Glenn Beck, Dec. 3, 2009 False
* * *
4. "Far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns." Tucker Carlson, Aug. 9, 2014 Pants on Fire
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5. White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard once served as the "right-hand man" for Bertha Lewis, who heads up ACORN. Steve Doocy, Sept. 29, 2009 False
* * *
6. "Look at the debt that has been accumulated in the last two years. It's more debt under this president than all those other presidents combined."
Sarah Palin, May 31, 2011 False
* * *
7. "There is no good data showing secondhand smoke kills people." John Stossel, Dec. 4, 2014 False
* * *
8. "Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history." Sarah Palin, Aug. 1, 2010 Pants on Fire
* * *
9. "The insurance industry is actually run by mostly Democrats." Dana Perino, Oct. 31, 2013 False
* * *
10. The Obama administration "manipulated deportation data to make it appear that the Border Patrol was deporting more illegal immigrants than the Bush administration." Lou Dobbs, July 1, 2014 False
* * *
11. Some doctors say Ebola can be transmitted through the air by "a sneeze or some cough." George Will, Oct. 19, 2014 False
* * *
12. Says the Texas State Board of Education is considering eliminating references to Christmas and the Constitution in textbooks. Gretchen Carlson, March 10, 2010 Pants on Fire
* * *
13. Because of President Barack Obama’s failure to "push job creation," the black unemployment rate in Ferguson, Mo., is three times higher than the white unemployment rate. Lou Dobbs, Aug. 19, 2014 False
* * *
14. When White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Mao Tse-tung was "one of her favorite philosophers, only Fox News picked that up."
Bill O’Reilly, Oct. 23, 2009 False
* * *
15. "The president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day." Michele Bachmann, Nov. 3, 2010 False (Note: Bachmann’s claim was made on CNN, not Fox News but Glenn Beck made a similar claim on Fox)
* * *
16. "We researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it." Bill O’Reilly, Oct. 27, 2010 Pants on Fire
* * *
17. "If you make more than $250,000 a year you only really take home about $125,000." Steve Doocy, July 11, 2012 False
* * *
18. A Census Bureau worker says he was told to skew information to bring the unemployment rate down "as we headed into an election season." Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Nov. 19, 2013 False
* * *
19. "Health care mandate will require imprisonment and fines for Americans who can’t afford to purchase insurance or pay hefty government penalties." Patients First, Sept. 21, 2009 Mostly False (Note: Fox hosts have said closely similar statements because of our resear
Lithium batteries have a round-trip efficiency of about 95%.
For hydrogen, it is about 60%.
So lithium wins for most applications.
Hydrogen wins when weight is a really big concern. So it may make sense for aviation.
Hydrogen also scales well, since big tanks have a better volume-to-area ratio. So it may make sense for ships.
For static applications like grid-storage, sodium-ion or vanadium-redox may be better than either lithium or hydrogen.
But for cars or smaller, lithium batteries are the way to go. You will never see a hydrogen fuel cell in a cell phone.
Lithium batteries have a round-trip efficiency of about 95%.
For hydrogen, it is about 60%.
So lithium wins for most applications.
Hydrogen wins when weight is a really big concern. So it may make sense for aviation.
Hydrogen also scales well, since big tanks have a better volume-to-area ratio. So it may make sense for ships.
For static applications like grid-storage, sodium-ion or vanadium-redox may be better than either lithium or hydrogen.
But for cars or smaller, lithium batteries are the way to go. You will never see a hydrogen fuel cell in a cell phone.
Hydrogen wins when you need to store store truly massively amounts of excess energy which is something you cannot currently do with batteries. That is the one big thing what still makes Hydrogen interesting despite the low conversion efficiency. If you are producing huge amounts of excess energy and can't store it in battery arrays, storing it as Hydrogen at 50% round trip efficiency is still better than letting all that energy go to waste assuming you can do the hydrogen conversion cost effectively. The currently most sensible thing to do with this hydrogen is use it to power always on gas power plants to supplement solar and wind power and then use the energy to charge cars or whatever else it is you need the energy for. This, again, assumes that you can do the round trip conversion of electric energy into hydrogen cost effectively.
You could use it as a heating/household gas too with different infrastructure. On the island that makes perfect sense. No need for propane which is mostly Hydrogen anyway.
Um, wouldn't you just use an electric heat pump? Much more efficient if you are starting from electricity. Heat pumps actually have efficiencies of 2x to 3x due to electricity is a "high quality" energy source that can easily be used to move energy from the surroundings. This is opposed to 1; e.g., you lose a fair amount of energy converting electricity to hydrogen and furnaces lose heat in their exhaust.
There are a number of very well placed places on the planet that can use local renewable energy sources to achieve 100% renewable power sourcing. Unfortunately that is a relatively trivial number of places compared to the global population and where everyone lives.
I guess the point is to say that yes you can live 100% renewable if you just happen to have a sufficiently small population in of the very few weâ(TM)ll placed places. Or something.
Hydrogen wins when you need to store store truly massively amounts of excess energy
Actually, it is usually not the best solution. Pumped storage and compressed air have better efficiency and need less capital investment. Vanadium-redox will give much better efficiency, and can scale with just a bigger tank.
If hydrogen made sense for grid storage, profit seeking companies would be doing it. They aren't.
Hydrogen storage only makes sense when weight and/or power density are more important than efficiency.
You could use it as a heating/household gas too with different infrastructure. On the island that makes perfect sense. No need for propane which is mostly Hydrogen anyway.
Um, wouldn't you just use an electric heat pump? Much more efficient if you are starting from electricity. Heat pumps actually have efficiencies of 2x to 3x due to electricity is a "high quality" energy source that can easily be used to move energy from the surroundings. This is opposed to LESS THAN 1; e.g., you lose a fair amount of energy converting electricity to hydrogen and furnaces lose heat in their exhaust.
You are so fucking stupid you are lowering the quality of the conversation just by having a slashdot account
Spotted the liberal!
Multiple-assertion citations required.
Nope. You get about 9.7MJ/L for compressed hydrogen, and about 40% of that (4.3 MJ/L) for LiPo batteries. Hydrogen is much more efficient by weight and volume.
And if you need 700+ kg of tank to store your hydrogen - you're doing it wrong. Here's a massive 850L tank that would be equivalent energy storage to about 4800 kg of batteries - and it weighs 215 kg. Not even close.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
They make great whisky too.
Are you familiar with the Aquion Saltwater battery? http://aquionenergy.com/techno...
I haven't really dug into it, but it sounds like the technology is at the very least a *lot* cleaner than the existing options, and possibly no more toxic than the ambient environment.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
One day the wind stopped blowing and everyone fell over.
Sheesh.
This isn't anything like Denmark because they don't have a cable to send the excess power anywhere. So they're going to see if storing and transporting it as Hydrogen is economical. It's not clear to me that it will be, but they seem to think it's worth a try..
"Just liquify hydrogen. In order to do that we need massive quantities of coal."
Why not use some of the abundant electrical energy produced by non-burning sources that separated the hydrogen and oxygen in the first place?
Orkney is where testing is done under wet dream conditions that maximize energy production from wind, wave, and tidal flows. Population 22K, so 'energy too cheap to meter', but we've heard that before. Imagine some clever ape just came up with the idea of building dams and using water constrained outflow to generate electricity. Locals would have energy abundance until the power could be spread out. Articles would be written about how hydro dams were going to power the endless growth of industrial society. Bottomline reality check, XKCD bitches: all the hydro that exists, is being built or could be built (assuming billions of humans agree to move to higher ground) won't power life as we know it now, let alone empower continued growth. Not one hydroelectric dam has been built using hydroelectric power. Not one energy producing system on Orkney was made using alternative energy from Orkney or anywhere else. It was made, like all dams (Teslas, PV panels, industrial agricultural products aka food...) almost entirely from fossil fuels. The energy return from tidal is high, higher even than hydro, but alternative energy sources are not alternative to the larder of planetary fossil fuels we are burning through in a flash of geological time. http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/emergy-yield-ratio-matters.html
1. For every turbine erected, cut down a tree, so the total wind blockage remains constant. Ban the planting of new trees.
Even if your comment wasn't completely absurd in the first place, the Earth loses 18.7 million acres of forests per year .
So yeah, there's already plenty of "wind changing" going on, more so than we could ever erect enough windmills to counteract.
Multiple-assertion citations required.
Current best processes for water electrolysis (PEM or alkaline electrolysis) have an effective electrical efficiency of 70–80%. Hydrogen fuel cells have an efficiency of 70-80%. So best case is 0.8*0.8 = 64%. Plus you need copious energy to compress or liquify the hydrogen for storage, which lowers the effective efficiency even more.
Vanadium-redox has a RTE of 65-75%.
Pumped storage has an RTE of 70-80%.
In practice, compressed air has an RTE of about 70%.
Nope [wikipedia.org]. You get about 9.7MJ/L for compressed hydrogen, and about 40% of that (4.3 MJ/L) for LiPo batteries.
And about 34-36 MJ/L for gasoline and diesel. That's more than four times as much energy per volume.
And if you need 700+ kg of tank to store your hydrogen - you're doing it wrong. Here's a massive 850L tank that would be equivalent energy storage to about 4800 kg of batteries - and it weighs 215 kg. Not even close.
See, here's the thing, with gasoline/diesel/kerosene, the total weight of the tank and fuel goes rapidly down as you use fuel. With hydrogen, almost all the weight is the container, so your efficiency is lower simply because you always have to move that extra mass around, even when near empty. Planes, for example, take care to not overfill so they won't have to haul more mass than needed. With hydrogen, there's little choice.
You need to subtract the energy cost of compressing that hydrogen to 700 bars. It's not a small amount of energy.
Additionally, hydrogen is extremely corrosive, and if an uncontrolled fire breaks out, it's invisible. Hydrogen has a lot of problems to go with it.
Hydrogen wins when you need to store store truly massively amounts of excess energy
Actually, it is usually not the best solution. Pumped storage and compressed air have better efficiency and need less capital investment. Vanadium-redox will give much better efficiency, and can scale with just a bigger tank.
If hydrogen made sense for grid storage, profit seeking companies would be doing it. They aren't.
Hydrogen storage only makes sense when weight and/or power density are more important than efficiency.
Vanadium redox batteries require about 10 tonnes of Vanadium, an element priced in troy ounces per MWh of capacity. For something small like an island, just call Elon. That's the right scale for Li+. Either that or use a bunch of recycled auto batteries if you really want to save on price.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
they cannot find enough uses for the emission-free power they create
How about using all their excess electricity to make the next generation of wind turbines to replace the ones they bought from an industrialised country?
Generating their own electricity is nice, but it doesn't make them self-sufficient. They are completely dependent on places with mines, steel plants, manufacturing and development to send them the equipment to generate electricity and to maintain it. If they wanted properly sustainable energy, they would have produce the wind turbines on their islands.
But that would require a fully industrial society which their small population could not support.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
So, If I am to understand you correctly we could just build enough windmills and photovoltaics to power humanity. I am with you on that point. It is entirely doable. It would take a massive manhattan scale initiative to get it done, but it entirely feasible. I just wonder how it would be possible politically. Dams are generally frowned upon by democrats. Also if we were to cover large swaths of the desert with PV, I am sure it would affect some endangered species and cause the whole initiative to end in an endless series of lawsuits.
People will have an affect on the planet and climate. In the end Nuclear offers the potential to be the safest and most environmentally friendly path towards powering the planet.
If you hate human beings and feel that we are a cancer, that is a self defeating attitude. What happened to the endless optimism of the 50's?
genocide is a verb now?
Sorry dude, genocide has been verbed.
Bear in mind that these are small islands off the north coast of Scotland. They have a dialect word "yarfast" meaning "tied down so it won't get blown away". https://books.google.com/books...
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
As a janitor?
Nuclear offers the potential to be the safest and most environmentally friendly path towards powering the planet.
Tell that to the people who experienced Fukushima or Chernobyl. Nuclear is safe and clean right up to the point in time when it becomes not safe nor clean. And unlike "dirty" energy sources based on burning hydrocarbons, there is no composting or planting of trees that can clean up the effects of a nuclear accident.
Why would you want to carry around 800 kg of batteries when you could do 12 kg of hydrogen?
You forgot the weight of the hydrogen tank and the fuel cells. There are many whys. One, hydrogen is soluable in many metals which makes building effective tanks surprisingly difficult. Then there's the issue of filling via very high pressure hoses, something which is a rather different prospect from liquid hydrocarbons or just plugging in. Then there's the infrastructure required to either create or ship hydrogen. It's easy for electricity: for day to day use, you can charge from an ordinary circuit at home, with relatively few filling stations required. You're dependent on filling stations for hydrogen. There's also the lower efficiency of round tripping via hydrogen, making every refill more expensive.
People have tried hydrogen cars before. They're certainly doable. Turns out battery ones are just more practical at the moment.
PS your signature pegs you as a shrill moron.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"It seems the stuff of fantasy. Giant ships sail the seas burning fuel that has been extracted from water using energy provided by the winds, waves and tides."
LOL - "It seems the stuff of fantasy". ALL ships (including "giant" ones) used to use SAILS to SAIL across the oceans, up until the last century or so... Extracting energy from the wind.
www.climatedepot.com
FTFA :
Today the islands are so festooned with wind turbines ...
I'm dropping any idea of visiting there as a tourist*. The place must look like an industrial estate.
* Perhaps they see that as a plus point.
sorrying duding, sorry and dude have been verbed.
did you even read that page http://www.mahytec.com/en/products/compressed-hydrogen-storage/ and do you know how to do calculations?
"Our 850 L tank can store about 4,2kg hydrogen at 60bar"
let that sink in 4.2KG , 4.2*142 = 596.4 MJ from your own figures ("Hydrogen has about 142 MJ per kg, about 3X that of diesel and gasoline")
weird as you said that 9.7MJ/L for compressed hydrogen (so you think it has 850*9.7 = 8245MJ, about 13.824614352783366867873910127431 times more than it really does)
See the error in your thinking yet, or do I need to go on pointing out your an idiot?
What about the combustion engine and complex drivetrain? With an electric motor you shave a lot of weight. No fuel pump/plumbing, no radiator, no water pump, no belts, no alternator, no exhaust system, very simple fixed gearbox, smaller 12V battery, no engine oil, and of course no engine block with pistons and spark plugs and all the rest of it.
Also a lot lower maintenance.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
""As a conservative republican, I am for using nature's natural resources to power humanities future." - Did you mean "humanity's future" or are you... uneducated generally, blathering above your pay grade?"
But he stated clearly that he was a Republican, a conservative on top.
They use spelling from the time spelling wasn't invented yet, they don't like that liberal Grammar thingies either.
I wish their site had more technical detail. It would be interesting to compare it with low temperature sodium sulphur, which is the other big player in grid scale batteries. Similarly it's pretty good on the environmental front, the only real down side is that "low temperature" means about 100C so it does require heating to operate. As ever it's a trade off between build cost, running code, efficiency and environmental sustainability.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why large swathes of the desert? What about all the roof space in cities? Say a 3kw system per house, millions of houses means gigawatts of power. Industrial roofing, malls, office blocks, you could build a superstructure over car parks to support panels, all that is a very large space.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Festoon, not fester, you unfeasibly stupid moron
Stick to words with no more than three letters and you might have a chance at constructing a sentence that won't lead to other people laughing at you. They almost certainly will, seeing as you're so fucking stupid that the content of your messages is even more cretinous than your risible grasp of English, but God knows, you've got to try something to lessen the ridicule, surely.
Russian? Pillock? Or did you go for the double?
Convert it to methane? It makes it a lot easier to store and transport.
Hydrogen is a significantly different set of engineering issues with respect to hydrocarbons.
flammable range for natural gas is five to 15 percent,
Now while the explosive limits of hydrogen in air range from about 18 -- 60 % the flammable limits are from 4 -- 75 %, in oxygen the limit of flammability goes all the way from 4% to 95% read: for practical purposes, hydrogen in oxygen is always at least a flammable mixture.
Also need to be weary of hydrogen embrittlement.
These are not unsolvable problems but do require care on everyon's part.
9.7MJ/L is valid at 700 bar but LynnwoodRooster used the value for a tank which can handle only 60 bar. Hydrogen is not good for energy storage. LynnwoodRooster is either confused or a troll.
It's not a just a way of storing energy, it's also a valuable chemical feedstock, and its synthesis will be necessary if we want to get rid of fossil fuels in the chemical industry.
Ezekiel 23:20
Hydrogen goes in a tank. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
At a density of 71 kg/m^3, and a temperature of 20 K.
Ezekiel 23:20
And if you need 700+ kg of tank to store your hydrogen - you're doing it wrong. Here's a massive 850L tank [mahytec.com] that would be equivalent energy storage to about 4800 kg of batteries - and it weighs 215 kg. Not even close.
Are you serious? That tank is the equivalent of a 100 kWh battery. Just like the one you get in some Teslas. Are you claiming that those Teslas weigh over 4800 kg?
Ezekiel 23:20
...the story doesn't mention anything about subsidies and/or tariffed rates. Is this that rarest of beasts, unique in all the world, a commercial wind turbine installation built for the purpose of generating a profit?
Of course not! https://www.theguardian.com/en...
"The Scottish government warned this week that if Westminster ruled out allowing onshore windfarms in the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland to compete for subsidies, £2.5bn of investment would be put at risk."
Anyone who's worried that wind and solar power will have their morally elevated "sustainability" marred by fiscal sustainability can relax.
By the way, I wonder what wind and solar (and tidal in the case of the Orkenys) has done to the cost of electricity?
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Here is some info to back some of this up:
https://arstechnica.com/scienc...
The bitcoin miners must be arranging travel plans now to use all that cheap juice.
Hey, I'm all for continuing to use gas and diesel! It's a great source. I am a firm believer that we are experiencing climate change, but that it is dominated by natural cycles - our little bit of CO2 in the air is not a driver of much of anything natural - just political.
However, hydrogen is quite a bit better than batteries. You said that
the same mass of hydrogen takes up a HECK of a lot more volume. And once you factor in the mass of the containers and other hardware needed to secure hydrogen, the advantage per mass is no longer as clear either.
That is not correct. Hydrogen storage, as compared to battery storage, is about 60% more efficient by volume, and around 25X more efficient by weight. Batteries are volume and weight inefficient, kind of a "last resort" thing...
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They have too much power now, at least that's what TFS stated. So if they have excess power - compression is irrelevant.
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Fuel cell. Incredibly efficient, extremely simple - and you get power right out. You don't need a reciprocating engine.
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Hydrogen has a LOT more energy (about 75X as much) by weight than LiPo batteries. Changes things a bit, doesn't it?
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See above - hydrogen tanks and valving is really not that heavy. A couple hundred kg to carry the equivalent of a tonne or two of batteries. Hydrogen has ~75X the power density by weight - that leaves a BIG overhead factor for a tank or valving system. As far as infrastructure - we have one now, with tens of thousands of refilling stations all around.
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There is another tank on that page, that stores 52L of hydrogen. That's about equivalent to a 132kW battery - double the typical Model 3. And the tank weighs in at 38 kg. My point stands - compressed hydrogen is MUCH more efficient space and weight-wise than batteries.
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Not really, if you pull your numbers out of your ass like you just did above.
Ezekiel 23:20
Check the bottom tank on that page - 700 bar, 52L. Given there are 9.17 MJ/L for compressed hydrogen, that's about 476 MJ of energy. At ~278 Wh per MJ, that is equivalent to a 132 kWh pack - about double a Model 3. So a small, 38 kg tank has the same energy storage as a pair of Model 3 battery packs. Tell me again why batteries are good? Less energy density (by weight or volume), a lot longer to charge, and provably more damaging to the environment (the environmental cost of making a 132 kWh battery pack is huge compared to the electrical energy needed to compress 52L of hydrogen).
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Run the numbers yourself. A little 38kg, 52L tank holds about the same energy as 132 kWh of batteries (given that there are 277W per MJ). But that's OK - stay ignorant, my friend - stay ignorant!
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That is not correct. Hydrogen storage, as compared to battery storage, is about 60% more efficient by volume, and around 25X more efficient by weight.
...and the tank you've linked above is comparable to a 100 kWh Tesla automotive battery, at about half the mass and twice the volume. So it's not 60% more efficient by volume, but 50% LESS, and not 25x more efficient by weight, but only 2x as much. Liar, liar, pants on fire...
Ezekiel 23:20
Agreed on wanting more information. From what I recall, possibly from other sources as well, the Aquion battery is made from relatively common, nontoxic materials, can be made for a similar price to lead-acid, with a similar energy/weight ratio, but lower energy/volume. So not really suitable for mobile applications, but with great potential for grid and home use.
And then there's the unrelated liquid metal batteries - I don't recall hearing of any commercially available models yet, but they seem to hold the promise of simplicity, effectively unlimited lifetime (since the normal mechanical damage associated with charging can't form in liquid) , and extremely high charge and discharge rates. Of course, operating at temperatures that keep the metals liquid makes them unsuitable for many/most applications, but the grid potential is immense.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There is another tank on that page, that stores 52L of hydrogen. That's about equivalent to a 132kW battery - double the typical Model 3. And the tank weighs in at 38 kg.
*That* tank is equivalent to a 35 kWh battery, HALF the typical Model 3. TWO of them would be equivalent to a Model 3. A 200 kW fuel cell stack would add another 100 kg. All three would occupy about 250 liters of volume. Model 3's battery has around 360 liters, making it 45% mode voluminous. However, it can *also* be placed more out of way, since its smallest element is less than ten centimeters long, whereas those tanks have a 33 cm diameter. It actually forms Model 3's floor.
Ezekiel 23:20
Run the numbers yourself. A little 38kg, 52L tank [mahytec.com] holds about the same energy as 132 kWh of batteries
Well, I did. That tank is cited as containing 1.5 kg of hydrogen, which is worth around 35 kWh in your typical fuel cell, NOT 132 kWh. Your math skills suck.
Ezekiel 23:20
Hydrogen has ~75X the power density by weight
Absolutely not. Two tonnes of batteries today have a power output of almost 2 MW. That requires around a 1000 kg fuel cell today. So it's at best 2x as much, and only if you completely discount the storage which might easily almost double that. So it's maybe in the 1.5x ballpark for power density.
Ezekiel 23:20
> Today batteries are better in every possible way except possibly air travel
What about the materials used to make batteries? Are those materials available in near limitless amounts?
What about the processing and disposal of those materials?
I would think that electric is also quieter.
But what about the material to make the battery? If the whole world started using batteries for everything, would there eventually be a shortage of such material? Also have to consider the disposal of such material. Is such material considered hazardous?
Well, there's for example enough lithium in sea water to make a 170 MWh battery for every person currently living on this planet. Is that enough?
Ezekiel 23:20
Why large swathes of the desert? What about all the roof space in cities? Say a 3kw system per house, millions of houses means gigawatts of power. Industrial roofing, malls, office blocks, you could build a superstructure over car parks to support panels, all that is a very large space.
Because that only gets you about 10% of the way there. Cities don't actually cover a huge amount of space. So when some says it will take 12% of the land to put solar, you should think that means 2x as much land use by humans and much less for nature. Also, GW are nice but we measure grid level electricity usage in 1,000s of terrawatt hours. Look into the problem yourself and you will start making fun of everyone for their lack of math. Hint, more solar and wind means natural gas.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Hint, more solar and wind means natural gas.
It's one way to deal with intermittency, but the requirement can be offset with a balance of renewables and continental-scale HVDC too, demand shaping, storage, and some residual generation from other sources, for example natural gas, hydroelectric and perhaps nuclear to provide an assured baseline such as the reduced demand overnight when solar does not generate and there is a chance wind will not.
The Fully Charged YouTube channel has a number of reports from Orkney. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXe1hBvlylw&list=PLzD0K2OhbVfGCtXeA6iAQ3ufh2W84t2Gy
All the grid scale stuff is abundant and easy to recycle, e.g. lithium and sodium.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Check the bottom tank on that page - 700 bar, 52L. Given there are 9.17 MJ/L for compressed hydrogen, that's about 476 MJ of energy. At ~278 Wh per MJ, that is equivalent to a 132 kWh pack - about double a Model 3. So a small, 38 kg tank has the same energy storage as a pair of Model 3 battery packs. Tell me again why batteries are good? Less energy density (by weight or volume), a lot longer to charge, and provably more damaging to the environment (the environmental cost of making a 132 kWh battery pack is huge compared to the electrical energy needed to compress 52L of hydrogen).
Most people don't want their car to blow up. Hydrogen is difficult to store and requires you cooling it so it actively requires continuous input of energy to keep it stored. Its best use is for grid scale storage but requires certain energy market conditions to be profitable. Basically, the energy prices need to swing at least 2x per day due to other intermittent power sources. Good news is that that happens in CA and Germany most days. Bad news is that nobody other than energy traders want the prices to swing that much everyday so its hard to invest in up-front infrastructure costs when you can't be certain such market conditions will continue. Same problem for most other storage schemes, unless you can be certain that energy market will continue to be very volatile, you can't risk such a large amount of capital on something that might become useless at some point in the future. Operating the Helms pumped storage is like printing money for PG&E yet there are no plans for them to build another one. There are 2 private plans for pumped hydro in CA but they are small, years away, and highly speculative as their cost of raising capital was on par with nuclear.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
See above - hydrogen tanks and valving is really not that heavy.
quote the numbes then. It's not going to be as heavy overall but it's not as light as you're making out. It's not a 75x difference.
A couple hundred kg to carry the equivalent of a tonne or two of batteries.
It's reached the stage of needing actual hard numbers.
Hydrogen has ~75X the power density by weight
ITYM energy density.
that leaves a BIG overhead factor for a tank or valving system.
Well no. Hydrogen has more or less fixed costs for the valving and fuel cells, and a linearish scaling for the tanks (surface area goes by the square, volume by the cube, but the wall thickness has to increase too) and actual gas. The scaling factor is smaller than batteries.
The batteries have a zero overhead and a higher linear scaling factor.
But er're not in the unlimited region, so there's a tradeoff. What is the weight of a BEV versus the weight of an equivalent HEV, all things considered?
As far as infrastructure - we have one now, with tens of thousands of refilling stations all around.
No, there are 39 in the entire US (mostly in california)
https://www.greencarcongress.c...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Agreed on wanting more information. From what I recall, possibly from other sources as well, the Aquion battery is made from relatively common, nontoxic materials, can be made for a similar price to lead-acid, with a similar energy/weight ratio, but lower energy/volume. So not really suitable for mobile applications, but with great potential for grid and home use.
And then there's the unrelated liquid metal batteries - I don't recall hearing of any commercially available models yet, but they seem to hold the promise of simplicity, effectively unlimited lifetime (since the normal mechanical damage associated with charging can't form in liquid) , and extremely high charge and discharge rates. Of course, operating at temperatures that keep the metals liquid makes them unsuitable for many/most applications, but the grid potential is immense.
Very poor energy density. 1/100th that of Lithium-ion. Basically would require more land than the solar or wind that its backing up per watt hour of storage. Its nice for remote small/cheap solar though and very environmentally friendly.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
That cable however doesn't transmit as much as the excess is expected to regularly become. This doesn't make the connection disappear. It's not some sort of fuse, you fuckwit.
Hydrogen has about 142 MJ per kg, about 3X that of diesel and gasoline.
Yes, but the issue is MJ/litre, not per kg in a practical sense for creating cars.
And if you need 700+ kg of tank to store your hydrogen - you're doing it wrong. Here's a massive 850L tank that would be equivalent energy storage to about 4800 kg of batteries - and it weighs 215 kg. Not even close.
Assuming that's just the weight of the tank, it contains 60kg of liquid hydrogen. So the energy contained is 60*142MJ in 215+60kg, so the actual energy density is 31MJ/kg. For petrol that's still about 180L, or 40 gallons, which is not really typical of the typical car. So if you scale it down by a factor of 2.5 to a more typical size, the petrol tank will weigh only a few kg, so petrol density will fall to maybe that 31MJ/kg, but the storage of hydrogen will be less efficient as the surface area of the tank will be relatively greater. So in terms of energy density, taking into account containment, hydrogen's a bit worse than petrol. Not hugely so, but significantly. Then you have to take into account the need to carry around about 80kg of containment for a car, which is an extra person always in the car, which will affect MPG, plus the size required and the extra drag induced.
This is not to say hydrogen isn't viable, just that it's not nearly as good as you are suggesting in terms of energy density.
Hey, I'm all for continuing to use gas and diesel! It's a great source. I am a firm believer that we are experiencing climate change, but that it is dominated by natural cycles - our little bit of CO2 in the air is not a driver of much of anything natural
CO2 has pretty much doubled. By what mechanism does that not have the effect now it had in the past, and not the one demonstrated by physics?
They may have too much power in the Orkneys but unless it is transported to the mainland it's not necessarily particularly useful for the generation of hydrogen, except for the Orkneys, as the islands are remote. The issue is more than a grid hookup to the mainland is required so the Orkneys can sell the energy to mainland Scotland, and that's likely to be easier to manage than a plant to compress and pipe hydrogen to the mainland where it wouldn't currently have an obvious use, or filling up ships with bottles of the stuff.
476MJ in 38kg, plus the mass of the hydrogen, about 3.7kg for the hydrogen. So that's 476/(38+3.7)=11MJ/kg, compared to petrol, with a tank, of about 30MJ/kg. It's not going to win against denser fuels.
Fuel cells are about 50% efficient, so the 11MJ/kg hydrogen tank produces about 5.5MJ/kg at the wheel (assuming no other losses). A good diesel or petrol car is about 30% efficient, so it's producing 9MJ/kg at the wheel, based on fuel and containment weights. You'd have to take into account the overall vehicle efficiency, so weight of transmission, engine, fuel cell, overhead of heating and cooling, etc., to make a full comparison fully fair. You might get some improvement for hydrogen if using a fuel cell as it could use an electric drive train that could be shared with electric cars in a fleet.
Look further down the page - a 38kg small tank with 132 kWh storage.
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The fact it's doubled, and we've seen nothing more than temperatures around the time of the 1930s... Perhaps there is more to the system than the simplistic model - like the impact of clouds, for instance?
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Link above showed the tank to be 38 kg.in weight. For a ~132 kWh storage tank. That's pretty darn light.
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How heavy is the battery pack in a Model 3? We know that two of those battery packs are about the same as the 38 kg tank I linked - are you claiming that the battery packs on the Model 3 are just 38 kg, or even 76 kg?
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But you're pro-nuke? Fuck off. You hate NIMBYism and yet here you are. Stay true to the conservatve platform, hypocrite.
What about the fuel cells? I'm not going to deny that hydrogen will be lighter than bateries, but someone upthread expressed incredulity and asked why when there is a 75x difference. There is't a 75x differenece all things considered and the additional downsides outweigh the difference in energy density.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That would require a tank capable of storing 6 kg of hydrogen, but the table for that tank says 1.5 kg.
Ezekiel 23:20
How heavy is the battery pack in a Model 3?
Around 360 kg. However, it's designed to be flat and have a low CG, so it's mostly out of the way (under your feet). Cylindrical tanks and the fuel cell stack would require some room either in the front or in the back.
We know that two of those battery packs are about the same as the 38 kg tank I linked
We know it's the other way round; you need two of those tanks with 1.5 kg hydrogen in each to store an equivalent amount of electricity that one Model 3 battery pack can store, plus a 100 kg fuel cell to power Model 3's 200 kW motors, or a 170 kg fuel cell to power the 350 kW performance model. So it's something like 180 kg or 250 kg for the hydrogen equivalent of the 360 kg battery pack. Is a 110-180 kg mass difference relevant? I suppose you could argue that it's 10% of the mass of the vehicle, but that doesn't seem prohibitive. It's also easier to "refuel" at home. Plus, your hydrogen vehicle would *still* require a battery for regenerative braking, so the difference shrinks even further.
Ezekiel 23:20
He overestimates the energy per tank by a factor of four anyway; the page he links cites it as a tank for 1.5 kg of hydrogen. And even if he was right, a 132 kWh battery pack would still not weigh 38*75=2850 kg. That would make the 100 kWh Teslas impossible. They do NOT weigh four tonnes empty.
Ezekiel 23:20
Oh, sorry, a small mistake... The *volume* of the Model 3 battery pack is 360 liters, the mass is around 450 kg. So it's a 200-270 kg difference, before you add a battery into your fuel cell vehicle for recuperation. A typical hybrid car can easily have a 70 kg battery for that purpose (Prius has a 80 kg, 4 kWh battery, for example). So that shrinks it down back to 130-200 kg difference between a BEV and your FCEV.
Ezekiel 23:20
Yep, and in future years when "hydrogen spills" and subsequent loss to interstellar space renders the Earth more like Venus, it'll totally be worth it.
you know, because stuff that happens later is way off in the future, man...
More people die every year to coal power plant related accidents than nuclear. Even in the two years with actual accidents, Fukushima and... Chernobyl, coal killed more.
Coal plants put up particulates that contribute to asthma and other lung diseases. The tailings are full of toxic heavy metals and there is no real disposal plan for them. The industry dumps them into massive artificial lakes they call "ponds" to make them seem small. The industry then waits for the inevitable and entirely predictable heavy rain storm and lets it "accidentally" wash away. They consistently understate the leak size and toxicity then dispute the measurements that show them to be lying. Eventually a Republican "pro business" governor cuts them a sweetheart deal with a token fine and promise to be better or... Nothing, no punishment is agreed to.
And the poor people in mining towns, coal plants towns and anyone living downstream gets a dozen times higher a risk in increased cancer.
More people fall off roofs installing solar than die to nuclear plant related cancer. Oh, and coal plants out out enough radioactive material from the coal ash that if they were a nuclear plant they would have been shit down immediately.
So we agree - you need a lot more mass and volume of batteries to equal a hydrogen tank. The hydrogen tank can be filled in a matter of minutes, and with a fuel cell approach you can use electric motors - no need for an ICE. Again, why would you want batteries if hydrogen is available?
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We don't even use LNG in vehicles, only CNG because dealing with any cryogenic fuel is counter-productive if you have to store it for any length of time. Add to that the fact that there is more hydrogen in a litre of anhydrous ammonia than there is in a litre of liquid hydrogen. Unless you need a really high Isp engine, LH is a terrible fuel.
Hydrogen storage, as compared to battery storage, is about 60% more efficient by volume
I was comparing hydrogen to ICE, not to batteries. Hydrogen surely beats batteries in many ways, but I don't see it having many operational advantages over petrol/diesel.
The fact it's doubled, and we've seen nothing more than temperatures around the time of the 1930s...
It's much warmer than the 1930s. What evidence do you have for it being no warmer (temperature records for just the USA don't count as the USA is a very small proportion of the globe).
Perhaps there is more to the system than the simplistic model - like the impact of clouds, for instance?
You do realise that clouds are modelled, don't you. And you do also realise that Hansen's projections from 1988, for what is very close to the RCP 8.5 emissions profile we've actually seen have been very accurate. So now you need to explain why you think that the models, which have been accurate over the last 30 years are somehow not accurate.
Because unlike the hydrogen tank, the battery is filled in *seconds* of your time. You just plug it in at home and don't care about it. Also, no need to drive around to find a hydrogen pump.
Ezekiel 23:20
I have, and that's yet another problem added to the two I mentioned. Fortunately I'm not the one suggesting that we should be doing that.
Ezekiel 23:20