Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Prior to this there had been and remains a nascent movement around the > idea that hydrogen made from wind or solar was going to be our savior on > the energy front - despite the intractable poor economics involved in the > manufacture and storage. > The economics are poor. I expect this technology will never catch up with things like solar combined with battery storage. But I do not know if the problems are "intractable." If we had no alternatives, the problems might be tractable. But there is now no economic incentive to solve these problems. In that sense, hydrogen from solar or wind resembles concentrated solar power systems, such as Ivanpah or SEGS in the U.S., and various installations in Morocco and Spain. If the cost of PV solar had not fallen so drastically, concentrated solar power might have been competitive long enough to develop it and lower the cost. It often happens that whatever technology shows up first wins the competition just because it was first. This is known as "incumbency." See p. 63: https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf Hydrogen might have been used as a method of storing solar or wind power. Or as a method of transporting energy via pipeline from low population windy places such as North Dakota to population centers. That might still happen, but I doubt it. I do not think there is any chance that hydrogen will be used for transportation with fuel cells. The Toyota Mirai car is an example of that (https://www.toyota.com/mirai/). It will never work because you would have to have hydrogen fuel stations everywhere. An electric car can be charged at home. Or you can install a charger anywhere, because electric power is available everywhere. But a hydrogen powered vehicle must be refueled at a hydrogen gas station. It would cost huge amounts to build enough hydrogen stations. I think the era of chemically fueled ground transportation is rapidly coming to an end. It will all be battery powered electric soon.
