Electrification is expensive and the USA doesn't have a lot of long-distance passenger travel by train that makes it kind of economical.
There were 1.85 million new vehicle registrations in California in 2021.
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Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.
- Thread starter nwdiver
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Electrification is expensive and the USA doesn't have a lot of long-distance passenger travel by train that makes it kind of economical.
There were 1.85 million new vehicle registrations in California in 2021.
But there's plenty of freight. ~2B gallons of diesel are wasted annually by US rail. The trains are already electric, they can be retrofitted with cantilevers. Also wouldn't need to be every mile. Start with track that's on a grade. This is yet another area where the US is a '4th world nation'. Globally ~1/3rd of rail is electric. In the US it's < 1%. It's embarrassing.
Hopefully the shock of diesel at $5 per gallon will be a wake up call to fail less.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
The world's first hydrogen-powered passenger trains are here | CNN
The Coradia iLint trains, which have debuted in Lower Saxony, Germany, are emissions-free and run on one tank of hydrogen per day.
edition.cnn.com
(CNN) — The future of environmentally friendly travel might just be here -- and it's Germany that's leading the charge, with the first ever rail line to be entirely run on hydrogen-powered trains, starting from Wednesday.
Fourteen hydrogen trains powered by fuel cell propulsion will exclusively run on the route in Bremervörde, Lower Saxony. The 93 million euro ($92.3 million) deal has been struck by state subsidiary Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LVNG), the owners of the railway, and Alstom, builders of the Coradia iLint trains. The Elbe-Weser Railways and Transport Company (EVB), which will operate the trains, and gas and engineering company Linde, are also part of the project.
The trains, five of which which debut Wednesday, will gradually replace the 15 diesel trains that currently run on the route, with all 14 running exclusively by the end of the year. Just 1 kilo of hydrogen fuel can do the same as around 4.5 kilos of diesel.
Build a national grid along the tracks. The great part is that when you need to transport heavy equipment, there's a train track ready for use. Look at military bases with train track near by or through it. Win-win!
The world's first hydrogen-powered passenger trains are here | CNN
The Coradia iLint trains, which have debuted in Lower Saxony, Germany, are emissions-free and run on one tank of hydrogen per day.
(CNN) — The future of environmentally friendly travel might just be here -- and it's Germany that's leading the charge, with the first ever rail line to be entirely run on hydrogen-powered trains, starting from Wednesday.
Fourteen hydrogen trains powered by fuel cell propulsion will exclusively run on the route in Bremervörde, Lower Saxony. The 93 million euro ($92.3 million) deal has been struck by state subsidiary Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LVNG), the owners of the railway, and Alstom, builders of the Coradia iLint trains. The Elbe-Weser Railways and Transport Company (EVB), which will operate the trains, and gas and engineering company Linde, are also part of the project.
The trains, five of which which debut Wednesday, will gradually replace the 15 diesel trains that currently run on the route, with all 14 running exclusively by the end of the year. Just 1 kilo of hydrogen fuel can do the same as around 4.5 kilos of diesel.
Gotta love how scientifically ignorant these reporters are.
The chemical formula for diesel is C12H23, methane (aka natural gas) is CH4, and hydrogen is H2. That means it takes 6kg of methane to make 1kg of hydrogen. And assuming you can convert the two, it would take 13kg of diesel to produce 1kg of Hydrogen "fuel".
So these hydrogen trains need 3x more fuel to travel the same distance!
Way to solve your dependence on Russian gas Germany! /s
Edit: Anyone (including my pre-teen kids), who have heard the riddle, "which weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of iron?" would know that comparisons of dissimilar substances are pure nonsense.
Not a fan of hydrogen but that's such a dumb comment. So are you saying that we are dumb for using refined gasoline for our ICE cars but should instead fill up with crude oil and have mechanism in each car to refine the crude to gasoline then burn that gasoline?
Perhaps the correct perspective is to say with diesel and methane, you are lugging around extra C atoms.
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Not sure how you read my statement, but I'll bite.
Yes. We're dumb for using refined petroleum products as fuel. If there was some way to directly use crude instead of refining it first, then great (cargo ships can do this by the way). But that was NOT my point.
My point was that the proponents implied that using "only" 1kg of H2 was somehow better than using 4.5kg of diesel, NOT realizing that it would take 13kg of diesel (or in reality, 6kg of methane) to MAKE that 1kg of H2.
It's like the whole idiocy of E85, but doubled! Imagine needing to use 2 gallons of gasoline to produce each gallon of corn ethanol! All for the sake of being able to claim that it's "clean burning". That was my point.
Edit: I recommend that you not be so quick to think people make dumb comments on this forum. Yes, there are the occasional trolls, but most of us are NOT.
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Japan is pivoting back to nuclear after Fukushima disaster — and the IEA says it'll help cool gas markets
Japan is looking to bolster its options amid ongoing uncertainty in global energy markets.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
You do realize that you can make H2 from electricity? You don't need to use fossil fuels.
Don't be so quick to call the reporter ignorant.
Researchers propose new aluminum–sulfur battery with molten-salt electrolyte; low-cost, rechargeable, fire-resistant, recyclable
An international team of researchers led by Quanguan Pang at Peking University and Donald Sadoway at MIT reports a bidirectional, rapidly charging aluminum–chalcogen battery operating with a molten-salt electrolyte composed of NaCl–KCl–AlCl3. This differs from other aluminum batteries in the...
www.greencarcongress.com
Desalinate sea water then keep the salt for batteries.
Because Germany is awash in excess renewable energy? Germany has the highest electricity rates in the EU, because they're short on wind, solar, and hydro resources (UK has wind, spain & italy has solar, and norway has hydro). Using grid electricity (generated mostly from coal) to electrolyze H2 to run a train (all in the name of reducing demand for diesel) is ... counter-productive at best.
And to pre-empt the suggestion that the hydrogen could be shipped in from one of those countries, it should be noted that none of those countries has an excess supply of renewable energy yet. So green hydrogen isn't being electrolyzed at anywhere near the scale needed to supply a train line yet.
Germany's in a tight spot, no debate there. But a more effective solution would've been to install overhead electrical lines to electrify their trains, instead of converting to H2. It would've taken time to implement, but I'm willing to bet that it would still take less time than waiting for a decent supply of green hydrogen to be available.
dgpcolorado
high altitude member
Acquire enough materials and build enough factories to build enough batteries to make every new car and truck electric, in the huge market of California, in just three years? Nevermind the improvements in electric grid and charging infrastructure needed (not everyone has access to home charging, as some of us who do, tend to forget).
Well, that would certainly be disruptive but I'd venture to guess that the legislators and the governor who supported such a law would find themselves swiftly recalled. Even the current law faces extensive lawsuits.
LFP is the answer. The patent on the chemistry recently expired, so anyone can make their own and many of the major battery suppliers have been growing out factories like crazy. 2035 is over 13 years away. Even mining can be expanded in time on that timeline.
Now, imagine a portion of those EVs also used for V2G/grid stabilization/power during peak. No more curtailing of renewable production, meaning more electricity available overall!
mspohr
Well-Known Member
‘It’s a deal with the devil’: outrage in Appalachia over Manchin’s ‘vile’ pipeline plan
The fossil-fuel friendly senator has resurrected the Mountain Valley pipeline, leaving residents with a bitter pill to swallow
www.theguardian.com
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Russian plant ‘burning off £8m of gas a day’ as supply to Germany is limited
Experts say rate of gas flaring at Portovaya plant is unprecedented, and raise concerns over emissions
www.theguardian.com
Yes. Not replacing every car in three years. Just all new cars. It won't be the end of the world if new vehicle sales take a hit for a few years or if CA has to settle for importing 'used' MY 2024, 23, 22 vehicles for a few years. That barely qualifies as a mild inconvenience. We need to stop playing games. Norway is already >80% EV sales. Most people are making the poor choice of new ICE because it's available and they're lazy. People are going to be lazy... so stop making it available.
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Russian plant ‘burning off £8m of gas a day’ as supply to Germany is limited
Experts say rate of gas flaring at Portovaya plant is unprecedented, and raise concerns over emissions
Meanwhile, the GOP rejoices as this means less supply for the world and higher NG prices.
Meanwhile in UK...
dgpcolorado
high altitude member
Norway has the population of my small state, which is a speck compared to California.
I do wonder what would happen if, in your scenario, California absorbed all the new EVs that could be produced, since even that wouldn't be enough in three years ramp-up time. No EVs for the rest of us I guess!
Nevertheless, my opinion, that your three year deadline is politically impossible, remains unchanged.
Yes, I saw that when it was posted earlier and found it surprisingly unpersuasive, given that I'm inclined to support such things. Too many unanswered questions for me.
Maybe it's just me, but I find V2G a bit unrealistic. My car battery is already significantly degraded (20%+) and I'm supposed to give it extra cycles for V2G? I suppose if the financial incentives were high enough, but putting extra wear and tear on a $15k battery asks a lot of the EV owner, IMHO.
??? My post was about nwdiver's proposal that new ICE vehicle sales be banned by ~2025, not the current law making the shift by 2035. That's three years. BIG difference!
I agree that LFP seems as if it might be a mass market solution to the use of problematic elements, such as cobalt, at least until some better battery technology comes along. LFP has some drawbacks, however.
You do know that there's a problem getting recycling up and running due to the lack of batteries to recycle, right? LOL
V2G use would likely be <10kW rate, low enough to be negligible to the battery which is drained at 20+kW on the highway with spikes to 50-75kW. With battery that is good for 300k-1M miles, using it for V2G might mean the battery actually is worn in 10-15 years.
People are buying Tesla PowerWalls to get $2/kWh in CA. The per kWh price of EV is much lower than home battery so you can get in on VPP-like program with a much smaller investment that is also 'upgradable' every time you get a new EV.
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