Hydrogen vs. Battery

[SByer]

Hydrogen filling isn't as fast as gas, even at high pressure. Worse, there isn't a hydrogen station yet that can handle a reasonable number of cars per day. And hydrogen from renewables is still 1/3 as efficient as a BEV. Plus explosive. We've covered all this before. More marketing hype from an energy distribution company that wants to head off people learning how great is it to fill up a battery at home or work doesn't change the basic problems with hydrogen.

 

[brianman]

Hydrogen filling isn't as fast as gas, even at high pressure. Worse, there isn't a hydrogen station yet that can handle a reasonable number of cars per day. And hydrogen from renewables is still 1/3 as efficient as a BEV. Plus explosive. We've covered all this before. More marketing hype from an energy distribution company that wants to head off people learning how great is it to fill up a battery at home or work doesn't change the basic problems with hydrogen.

I get the impression that the other appealing aspect of hydrogen for suppliers.... is that they get to remain suppliers.

With gasoline, there is a liquid that you transport. Limited quantities, distribution, etc. Hydrogen, same story.

Electricity is significantly different in this regard.

I'm not sure if I've described it well or not. I'm tired tonite.

 

[dpeilow]

I tweeted to the head of the community company installing this system on the Isle of Wight. Up until this point they have managed to install a lot of very impressive smart grid and renewable infrastructure without a penny of public subsidy.

The response was:

@Ecoislandteam @dpeilow H2 generated from surplus renewables stored in H2 + then to vehicles - EV option OK but no guarantee of sun and wind

To which I replied:

@ecoislandhub agree on static storage, but batteries: >85% AC-AC efficiency vs. 40% for H2. Throwing away hard won renewable energy wasteful

And the reply:

@dpeilow aha - but didn't have TSB grant for batteries so H2 trial it is - injection into gas grid is interesting shunt for spare green nrg

So:

@ecoislandhub Sad. Money talks. Given urgency stressed @winacc should £ & time be wasted on technological cul-de-sac? http://efcf.com/reports/E21.pdf

Response?

@dpeilow head of R+D of largest car company in world sees it differently they have whole hydrogen society mapped out lets agree to differ

TSB is the UK's Technology Strategy Board, a quasi-government organisation that is charged with handing out money to fund projects that meet government policy on innovation.

 

[dpeilow]

I also spotted a very telling number in the ITM Power newsletter: http://www.itm-power.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FCB-012012.pdf

Considering the cost of the input electricity, hydrogen achieves price parity with petrol per mile when electricity can be sourced for 6.5p/kWh – a tariff which is easily accessible to the commercial user.

Sorry, I don't want price parity with petrol. That's their goal though, to stonewall the public from going EV until they have this stuff in place. The sheeple won't notice they're getting ripped off and there will be a smooth price transition to hydrogen.

 

[brianman]

Standard drill: tax what you don't want to happen.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Q What's are the key problems with batteries?
A They are expensive and slow to charge.

Q What do you need for large-scale battery swapping?
A A large number of charged batteries at a large number of swap stations.

Availability supporting variable demand requires redundancy (see electrical generation), and for batteries it's redundancy of the most expensive part in the car. In other words, effective battery swapping means that there must either be more than 1 battery for each car and either significantly more than 1 or restricted travel at periods of peak demand. On top of that, the swap stations are effectively swapping a low-density fuel tank, so require a larger storage space.

There's a lot of redundancy in liquid/gas refueling infrastructure, but it's cheaper redundancy of a denser consumable.

I don't want to bring this off topic, but the key thing to keep in mind for battery swap stations is the demand at such as station is an order of magnitude lower than a gasoline or hydrogen station (because BEVs still primarily charge overnight). From the US National household Travel Survey only about 10% of vehicle miles are trips over 50 miles. So the amount of batteries needed at a swap station is much lower than many people would estimate. Better Place estimates each swap station costs about $0.5 million (although in Denmark the cost has been reported to be about $3 million each), so it's about the same cost as a 100kg/day hydrogen station today. So as I said, refueling speed is not really a valid argument in the face of battery swapping (I was ignoring infrastructure issues, but even including infrastructure it appears to be about the same cost as hydrogen infrastructure).

As for your point about energy density, the key thing to keep in mind is hydrogen energy density is not much better than batteries volumetrically (plus you get about half the work out of the same amount of energy because of the relatively low efficiency of fuel cells). In a stationary location like a station, it's not an issue (because the core weakness of batteries, weight, doesn't matter anymore). The biggest mistake most people make when discussing hydrogen is treating it like a liquid fuel (basically a replacement for gasoline), when it is not.

 

[brianoflondon]

So the amount of batteries needed at a swap station is much lower than many people would estimate. Better Place estimates each swap station costs about $0.5 million (although in Denmark the cost has been reported to be about $3 million each), so it's about the same cost as a 100kg/day hydrogen station today.

Today the Better Place switch stations have 8 or even 6 batteries in them. They can fast charge all of them simultaneously if they had to. They can re-charge batteries faster than they can switch them so they don't need more. They tend not to do this as they prefer to charge off peak.

I think there must be more than 600 cars in use now, 10 working stations 28 more in varying states of coming on line. That's 300 odd spare batteries. Once we get to 5000 cars (possible this year or early next) that's not a lot of spare batteries.

Overrunning station costs have been more related to build and local permissions issues than any technology problems. Getting all the right building permits in Israel is what really slowed down Better Place here.

 

[GSP]

I got this link to NREL report from autobloggreen:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/learning_demo_final_report.pdf

Improvements in fuel cell durability toward 2000 hr target look good. Same for 250 mile range target. H2 cost from various sources is still $8-15/kg (equivalent to 1 gal gasoline), except they project that it could meet the $3/kg target with onsite methane reforming.

GSP

 

[richkae]

So the state of the art fuel cell vehicles:

1. Cost the most ( more than BEVs, and more than ICEs )
2. Have the really expensive part ( the fuel cell stack ) degrade just like batteries.
3. Are gutless. They have lower power output, so they will be no fun.
4. Cost a lot more to fuel than ICEs ( which cost a lot more to fuel than an BEV ), but if we invest a huge amount of money to build infrastructure the cost might be a little better or be about on par with gasoline ICEs.
5. Have inferior range to EVs. But more importantly an EV can drive its max range roundtrip from your home every day and never need to go to a fueling station - a 100 mile range FCV would force you to visit a fueling station every 2-3 days if you drive 40 miles a day.
6. Will have lousy cargo space because they need to carry around a giant cylinder of H2 under super high pressure.
7. Did I mention the giant cylinder of H2 under super high pressure?
8. Can refuel fast. This is the only thing that the FCV wins over a BEV.

No thank you.

 

[Doug_G]

8. Can refuel fast. This is the only thing that the FCV wins over a BEV.

I don't think even that is a given. Current H2 stations can only refuel a small number of cars per day. Someone also commented a while back that it takes a while for the pressure to equalize so the top half of the tank fills more slowly...

 

[stopcrazypp]

I don't think even that is a given. Current H2 stations can only refuel a small number of cars per day. Someone also commented a while back that it takes a while for the pressure to equalize so the top half of the tank fills more slowly...

5 minutes is typical if the station has the hydrogen pre-compressed at the right pressure. If the station has to compress hydrogen from a lower storage pressure, then it may take 15-20 minutes.

The linked report actually has a graph of fueling times (Figure 112, page 95, PDF page 108) and the average is below 5 minutes.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/learning_demo_final_report.pdf

 

[richkae]

5 minutes is typical if the station has the hydrogen pre-compressed at the right pressure. If the station has to compress hydrogen from a lower storage pressure, then it may take 15-20 minutes.

The linked report actually has a graph of fueling times (Figure 112, page 95, PDF page 108) and the average is below 5 minutes.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/learning_demo_final_report.pdf

Doesn't that chart actually show that the average is more than 5 minutes?

 

[brianman]

Doesn't that chart actually show that the average is more than 5 minutes?

Average=4.49 min
69% < 5 min

Quotes don't count for minimum post length check.

 

[richkae]

I see that chart 111 says that the average fueling time is less than 5 minutes - but the benchmark ( Tech Val Milestone ) they are going for is 5kg in 5 minutes.
Chart 112 shows that the average fueling rate is down in the 0.68 kg/min range, meaning that it will take 7.35 minutes to get 5kg.
I would assume from this that they are only fueling about 3.05 kg in the average fuel stop - thats not beating the target.
Stopping and fueling up when your tank still has 40% left in it may keep the average fueling time down but I think its cheating the test to get the results you want.

Edit: Chart 117 shows that the median fill up happens with the tank 42% - 50% full. Hydrogen range anxiety.

 

[richkae]

I think that many people underestimate how awesome it is to charge at home.
I've driven about 24000 miles over 3 years on energy charged from home.
I plug in about every other day. Thats 540 plug/unplug cycles over the 3 years at 10 seconds per plug/unplug. Thats 3 hours of my time over 3 years plugging and unplugging my car.

According to figure 27 the average FCV fills up after 98 miles.
Thats 244 fill ups. And at 45 mpkg I would need 784 minutes of H2 pumping time. The 244 fillups have at least a 5 minute overhead in and out of the fill up station - assuming I did not have to drive very far out of my way to get there.
Thats 53 hours of my time wasted fueling my FCV.
The FCV wastes more than 2 whole days of my life over 3 years.

 

[Robert.Boston]

The FCV wastes more than 2 whole days of my life over 3 years.

Way less than TMC Forums...:wink:

 

[GSP]

So the state of the art fuel cell vehicles:

1. Cost the most ( more than BEVs, and more than ICEs )
2. Have the really expensive part ( the fuel cell stack ) degrade just like batteries.
3. Are gutless. They have lower power output, so they will be no fun.
4. Cost a lot more to fuel than ICEs ( which cost a lot more to fuel than an BEV ), but if we invest a huge amount of money to build infrastructure the cost might be a little better or be about on par with gasoline ICEs.
5. Have inferior range to EVs. But more importantly an EV can drive its max range roundtrip from your home every day and never need to go to a fueling station - a 100 mile range FCV would force you to visit a fueling station every 2-3 days if you drive 40 miles a day.
6. Will have lousy cargo space because they need to carry around a giant cylinder of H2 under super high pressure.
7. Did I mention the giant cylinder of H2 under super high pressure?
8. Can refuel fast. This is the only thing that the FCV wins over a BEV.

No thank you.

That sums it up well.

With all the other advantages of EVs, I don't think 3000 mph fueling will be needed to get mainstream consumers to adopt them. 300 mph will be sufficient for road trips. The Model S will provide this. Customers will make some adjustments to get the EV benefits, just like they have done for other new disruptive technologies (automobile, mp3 players, etc).

For home and work charging, only 20-30 mph (30-40A) will be needed. Fueling at home is a great EV advantage that is hard to appriciate until you experience it.

BEVs will kill H2 for pass cars, and probably for other vehicles as well.

GSP

 

[vfx]

Let me give it a shot with HFC....

(you forgot)

Hydrogen is generated with clean energy from the sun.

 

[jcstp]

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Racer, Built By Students, Powered By Green | Earthtechling

 

[doug]

I Drove A Wicked Fast Electric BMW And It Made Me A Believer In EV Racing

E30fernando 6 hours ago
Bill - Do you see them using hydrogen/hydrogen fuel cells as the long-distance competing solution?


Bill Caswell 5 hours ago
I dont but Im not the right person to be asking about this stuff. when I worked at Ford in 2003 there was a hydrogen refilling station at their proving grounds. I didnt see it last fall when I went back. The concept makes sense but there are so many unanswered parts. Seems way easier to me to work on better batter technology which crosses thru so many parts of our daily lives. Like I doubt I'll ever have a hydrogen powered Iphone.