Will electricity prices start to kill off EV's?

[GT9]

Oilchange said:

And then again it might not and we are left with 0.5 kWh. I'd love for these predictions to be true but my crystal ball isn't that good...

Your username and profile suggest you have a distrust for these new-fangled electro-trickery contraptions.
And that you'd rather place your faith in something old-school that goes bang.
You've no doubt equated hydrogen as being 'just like' liquid fuels.
I can't say this enough times, hydrogen is not your friend.
It can't do what you you have been led to believe it can do.
It is not the consumer-friendly planet-saving substance that you are hoping it is.
If you miss-treat it, it will try harder than just about anything to kill you.

[ashenfie]

Maybe my maths is out and a 20L BOC GENIE Hydrogen Cylinder would be easier to compare as they provide figures
Cylinder specifications
BOC Name 54-G20
Product High purity hydrogen (99.995%)
Contents (g) 424 @ 300 bar
TARE weight (kg) 22.4
Fill pressure (bar) 300
Max height (mm) 660
Max diameter (mm) 325
Handle diameter (top) 270
Handle diameter (bottom) 294
Base width (mm) 305
kWh electrical
(assuming 50% efficient
hydrogen fuel cell) 7 @ 300 bar
5 @ 200 bar
4.5 @ 175 bar

But I have also seen these at 700 bar and 36litres (16 kWh) @ https://www.ullit.com/index.php/en/applications-en...

Approach would may collect surplus power from wind farms and create hydrogen and then when required convert back to electricity may not be efficient but a lot cheaper and quicker than a building hydro dams. There are also already more efficient fuels than the one quoted.

[FeelingLucky]

DonkeyApple said:

FeelingLucky said:

I'm not sure why people keep muddying the water with spam posts like these.

It's long established that every EV driver exclusively charges using only the most expensive public charger. Why would anybody even want to charge overnight for 5p/kWh (shortly to become 7.5p/Kwh)? God forbid anybody would become foolish enough to use PV/Battery for free charging.

The tired old argument about nobody ever sets off on a drive and stops in anything under 400 miles appears to have been replaced with this old chestnut regarding charging costs, where, incidentally all diesel vehicles can achieve a real word 80mpg.

But what about the pensioner who got talked into changing his 75mpg Honda Jazz for £100k Model X, 14 UPVC windows, a sprig of lucky heather and can only charge during Corrie? Do they not have enough to worry about with all the immigrants in rubber dinghies coming to steal their pension?

I live next door to him. He now feels compelled to shop at a Lidl 400 miles away. He loves his UPVC however. I managed to talk him into letting me have his lucky heather, and won the Euro Millions the very next day.

[Oilchange]

GT9 said:

Oilchange said:

And then again it might not and we are left with 0.5 kWh. I'd love for these predictions to be true but my crystal ball isn't that good...

Your username and profile suggest you have a distrust for these new-fangled electro-trickery contraptions. Only when people say battery capacity will double in 10-20 years. They just don't know.
And that you'd rather place your faith in something old-school that goes bang. Hydrogen? I doubt it's the fuel of the future.
You've no doubt equated hydrogen as being 'just like' liquid fuels. I've done no such thing.
I can't say this enough times, hydrogen is not your friend. I believe you.
It can't do what you you have been led to believe it can do. I think you're right.
It is not the consumer-friendly planet-saving substance that you are hoping it is. Am I hoping it is?
If you miss-treat it, it will try harder than just about anything to kill you. Yes, yes, I know, Zeppelin etc

[GT9]

Oilchange said:

GT9 said:

Oilchange said:

And then again it might not and we are left with 0.5 kWh. I'd love for these predictions to be true but my crystal ball isn't that good...

Your username and profile suggest you have a distrust for these new-fangled electro-trickery contraptions. Only when people say battery capacity will double in 10-20 years. They just don't know.
And that you'd rather place your faith in something old-school that goes bang. Hydrogen? I doubt it's the fuel of the future.
You've no doubt equated hydrogen as being 'just like' liquid fuels. I've done no such thing.
I can't say this enough times, hydrogen is not your friend. I believe you.
It can't do what you you have been led to believe it can do. I think you're right.
It is not the consumer-friendly planet-saving substance that you are hoping it is. Am I hoping it is?
If you miss-treat it, it will try harder than just about anything to kill you. Yes, yes, I know, Zeppelin etc

Fair enough, I thought you were banging the 'fuel of the future' drum that so often appears on these threads. Apologies for going off on one.

[Oilchange]

It's ok, I do have a lot of distrust though which comes across badly sometimes, so you were right to fire one back.

[otolith]

ashenfie said:

Maybe my maths is out and a 20L BOC GENIE Hydrogen Cylinder would be easier to compare as they provide figures
Cylinder specifications
BOC Name 54-G20
Product High purity hydrogen (99.995%)
Contents (g) 424 @ 300 bar
TARE weight (kg) 22.4
Fill pressure (bar) 300
Max height (mm) 660
Max diameter (mm) 325
Handle diameter (top) 270
Handle diameter (bottom) 294
Base width (mm) 305
kWh electrical
(assuming 50% efficient
hydrogen fuel cell) 7 @ 300 bar
5 @ 200 bar
4.5 @ 175 bar

But I have also seen these at 700 bar and 36litres (16 kWh) @ https://www.ullit.com/index.php/en/applications-en...

Approach would may collect surplus power from wind farms and create hydrogen and then when required convert back to electricity may not be efficient but a lot cheaper and quicker than a building hydro dams. There are also already more efficient fuels than the one quoted.

Those high pressure ones look similar to those used in the Mirai. 700 bar carbon composite. Not cheap, I shouldn't think. The problem transporting hydrogen is less mass than volume, so obviously running higher pressure is desirable.

[James44]

DonkeyApple said:

Plus, I'm not sure what the economic case is for this as GH will be much more expensive than the renewable electricity that it is made from which can just be piped directly into homes with no additional infrastructure costs.
.

Very inaccurate comment.

The average UK home uses some 5 to 7 times as much energy through its natural gas connection than it does through the electricity feed. And that's all peaked to a few months in winter. There is absolutely no way our transmission and distribution systems can carry that load, even with all the smart technologies and distributed storage you can think of. To electrify heat and transport would mean a massive rewiring of Britain, digging up half the streets and putting transmission towers all over the place. That is going to be eye wateringly expensive.

100% hydrogen compatible boilers are largely drop-in and estimated to be about 10% dearer than a has boiler. Heat pumps will never economic for about 80% of UK homes.

Other misguided comments are that the gas system cannot carry more than 20% hydrogen. For the past 20 years and for the next 10 years we are replacing all the cast iron pipework with polyethylene pipes which are 100% hydrogen compatible (look up MAINS replacement project). This is more by luck than judgement as that project is driven by safety and eliminating gas leaks than providing hydrogen compatibility. There will be some other works required to ensure hydrogen compatibility, but all economically possible.

BTW Germany has the largest European hydrogen network and believes its coated steel gas pipeline is largely 100% hydrogen compatible. Look up OGE and hydrogen.

[tamore]

where is the hydrogen going to come from to blend with nat gas? if the answer is excess renewables, it's the wrong answer. if the answer is steam reformation of nat gas, why on earth would you bother with that step. so what's left? nukes built to only crack water?

nothing about hydrogen for energy/ heating in a domestic situation makes any sense.

[350Matt]

Why is excess renewable resource the wrong answer ?

not trying to be facetious , honestly
as if you have solar panels on the roof and your EV is out at work with you then during the day, then your panels can be cracking water to hydrogen to store in your domestic tank to either burn in a boiler or put into a fuel cell later to run the home in the evening

or the solar panels could be filling up a battery bank instead of course which is probably more efficent


the main issue is this rush to to go 100% BEV before we are all ready for it
just let it happen naturally
market forces will dictate the solution as they always do

however it may not be the solution you like....

[delta0]

350Matt said:

Why is excess renewable resource the wrong answer ?

not trying to be facetious , honestly
as if you have solar panels on the roof and your EV is out at work with you then during the day, then your panels can be cracking water to hydrogen to store in your domestic tank to either burn in a boiler or put into a fuel cell later to run the home in the evening

or the solar panels could be filling up a battery bank instead of course which is probably more efficent


the main issue is this rush to to go 100% BEV before we are all ready for it
just let it happen naturally
market forces will dictate the solution as they always do

however it may not be the solution you like....

Agree. Excess sustainable energy is key. Today we are only using 15% gas for our needs. With so many alternatives coming online over the next decade and onwards we will have huge excess capacity.

[GT9]

350Matt said:

Why is excess renewable resource the wrong answer ?

not trying to be facetious , honestly
as if you have solar panels on the roof and your EV is out at work with you then during the day, then your panels can be cracking water to hydrogen to store in your domestic tank to either burn in a boiler or put into a fuel cell later to run the home in the evening

or the solar panels could be filling up a battery bank instead of course which is probably more efficent


the main issue is this rush to to go 100% BEV before we are all ready for it
just let it happen naturally
market forces will dictate the solution as they always do

however it may not be the solution you like....

You didn't responded on the efuels thread to my post about solar panels to produce hydrogen.

Converting solar energy to hydrogen for an average car in the UK would require around 20 kW of solar installation, way more than you can get on most roofs. You re also looking at £25k+ for just the panels.

Let's just say for now you could afford the cost and you have enough space for the panels.

The electrical energy yield would be roughly 1000 kWh per month.

Now if you were to use that energy to heat your home, that would be sufficient to displace nearly all of the gas you were using, IF you can make use of all of it.

The problem with converting it to hydrogen, compressing it and storing it is that you will lose a fair chunk of it.

Which brings us back to to your final sentence, i.e. it's far better to use a battery to preserve whatever renewable energy you can actually get hold of.

In practice, most homes are only going to be able to afford, and have space for, a solar array in the region of 4 kW or less.

So we are talking about a yield of 200 kWh per month or 2400 kWh per annum..

If you could store that in a battery to then transfer to an EV battery, then it would probably yield enough energy to run an EV for average mileage.

It would also yield enough energy to maybe power a heat pump system, assuming you can get that to work as intended.

The EV is the far more sensible and useful option though.

The only way you are going to make use of solar panels is if you generate, store and use the energy as electricity.

Hydrogen will completely screw the maths, making it both too expensive and too large to either run a car or heat the house.

[tamore]

it's 'excess' i'm questioning. we are so far away from having excess renewable electricity to do anything meaningful with. then if we do get to that point, hydrogen production, storage and transport is hideously inefficient. way better to figure out how to store that excess electrical energy and release it on demand. be it V2G, sand batteries, iron/air, or any of the other grid scale tech being developed. (in reality a combination of anything proven at grid scale)

hydrogen has a vital role as a process gas in industry. domestic fuel or passenger road transport? ner.

and as for every house producing and storing hydrogen from solar pv. i don't even know where to start.

Edited by tamore on Saturday 17th September 11:11

[DonkeyApple]

delta0 said:

Agree. Excess sustainable energy is key. Today we are only using 15% gas for our needs. With so many alternatives coming online over the next decade and onwards we will have huge excess capacity.

You can see that this is on the cards though. It's merely a function of time. The economics simply don't work as of yet (by that I mean the presence of 'man maths' is the most overt warning that a product only fits some scenarios not all) but solar will become cheaper and cheaper to install, as will batteries and it seems very likely that long before 2050 these prices will be low enough for home generation and storage to be a no brainer.

Just at the moment the crude figures of a decade to get one's capex back, plus the opportunity cost and for that to then put you slap bang into the end of life run down just doesn't make sense, especially as almost all U.K. households would need to be borrowing money for that capex. People are even borrowing today which strikes me as utter lunacy but that's by the by, it's just another industry that has its roots in door to door miss selling and dumb customers. That won't last much longer.

My guess is that by 2035 things will have Sterlex down a lot and home generation and storage along with energy trading will be pretty normal practice and growing steadily.

[ashenfie]

tamore said:

it's 'excess' i'm questioning. we are so far away from having excess renewable electricity to do anything meaningful with. then if we do get to that point, hydrogen production, storage and transport is hideously inefficient. way better to figure out how to store that excess electrical energy and release it on demand. be it V2G, sand batteries, iron/air, or any of the other grid scale tech being developed. (in reality a combination of anything proven at grid scale)

hydrogen has a vital role as a process gas in industry. domestic fuel or passenger road transport? ner.

and as for every house producing and storing hydrogen from solar pv. i don't even know where to start.

Edited by tamore on Saturday 17th September 11:11

By it's very definition excess electricity is very inefficient. There is no need to transport hydrogen,. Simply store and convert back electricity when we require it. Thats much like a hydro, but a lot cheaper and quicker to build. Therefore efficiencies don't come into, but commercially viability does. All indications are it's viable, just needs the investment.

[tamore]

ashenfie said:

By it's very definition excess electricity is very inefficient. There is no need to transport hydrogen,. Simply store and convert back electricity when we require it. Thats much like a hydro, but a lot cheaper and quicker to build. Therefore efficiencies don't come into, but commercially viability does. All indications are it's viable, just needs the investment.

well only time will tell (that you're wrong ) as far as i can see the only ones really banging the hydrogen drum are the 'blue hydrogen' lobby.

[DonkeyApple]

ashenfie said:

By it's very definition excess electricity is very inefficient. There is no need to transport hydrogen,. Simply store and convert back electricity when we require it. Thats much like a hydro, but a lot cheaper and quicker to build. Therefore efficiencies don't come into, but commercially viability does. All indications are it's viable, just needs the investment.

That isn't correct I'm afraid. The cost is huge and so are the losses. There is potential in certain situations for it to be better than a medieval water battery but it's still a long way from being proven.

The big issue is that a real battery is just much better for storing random flows of excess electricity production and releasing it back on demand. The issue there being cost but long before GH is proven we are likely to be on to the next generation of industrial battery so that's why the investment capital is flowing in that direction.

The GH market place is really being driven by Germany and that's because they are historically stuck in the mindset of using engineering to solve all problems at the expense of investing in technology.

There's a reason why the largest companies in Germany tend to be engineering firms and subsequently why German companies have dropped out of global indices which are now mainly driven by technology firms. They tend to be stuck focusing on 19th and 20th century engineering solutions over adopting technology to solve 21st century needs.

The U.K. isn't likely to do much with GH in the long run and we don't really need to.

[ashenfie]

tamore said:

ashenfie said:

By it's very definition excess electricity is very inefficient. There is no need to transport hydrogen,. Simply store and convert back electricity when we require it. Thats much like a hydro, but a lot cheaper and quicker to build. Therefore efficiencies don't come into, but commercially viability does. All indications are it's viable, just needs the investment.

well only time will tell (that you're wrong ) as far as i can see the only ones really banging the hydrogen drum are the 'blue hydrogen' lobby.

Like many things Norway is well ahead of us, having a white paper in place for 2030, https://h2cluster.fi/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/H2...

[GT9]

ashenfie said:

Like many things Norway is well ahead of us, having a white paper in place for 2030, https://h2cluster.fi/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/H2...

I think you mean Finland.

A Nordic country with a very cold climate and just 5.5 million people living in an area 50% larger than the UK.

Their energy burden is an order of magnitude less than ours, hydrogen makes far more sense there than it does here.

[ashenfie]

DonkeyApple said:

That isn't correct I'm afraid. The cost is huge and so are the losses. There is potential in certain situations for it to be better than a medieval water battery but it's still a long way from being proven.

The big issue is that a real battery is just much better for storing random flows of excess electricity production and releasing it back on demand. The issue there being cost but long before GH is proven we are likely to be on to the next generation of industrial battery so that's why the investment capital is flowing in that direction.

The GH market place is really being driven by Germany and that's because they are historically stuck in the mindset of using engineering to solve all problems at the expense of investing in technology.

There's a reason why the largest companies in Germany tend to be engineering firms and subsequently why German companies have dropped out of global indices which are now mainly driven by technology firms. They tend to be stuck focusing on 19th and 20th century engineering solutions over adopting technology to solve 21st century needs.

The U.K. isn't likely to do much with GH in the long run and we don't really need to.

Need to take your blinkers off buddy, the government has stepped in to save us all the pound is on the edge of collapse at what point do you suggest doing anything?