Engine Selection

[nickcoll]

Your first point applies equally to EVs and hydrogen powered vehicles, so I can't see that it is pertinent to a comparison.

 

Generating capacity is another thing. Whether we power vehicles with electricity directly or via hydrogen as a form of storage of electricity the amount of electricity required is undoubtedly a challenge as things stand. In fact it is much more of a problem with hydrogen because it is less efficient to produce it, so for the same amount of energy by your comparative figures (generous to hydrogen) we would still need 50% more electricity than by using electricity directly through EVs.

 

I don't doubt that hydrogen fuel cells can be made to work but I remain to be convinced that they will have a worthwhile or significant part to play because of their relative inefficiency and hence greater running cost, not to mention as you highlight the greater increase in electrical generating capacity that they will require.

 

Yes the 1.5 hybrid looks good and I might go for one myself, but I personally suspect that diesel will still have a role to play for a while too.

[logiclee]

3 hours ago, nickcoll said:

, but I personally suspect that diesel will still have a role to play for a while too.

 

For small to medium sized cars, a very short while.

[themanwithnoaim]

A nice chap whom lives up the road from me works in the development field of alternative fueled vehicles, he goes to China 6 or 7 times a year apparently that's where all his companies funding comes from.

 

He's pretty tight lipped but, the few things he has said have really opened my eyes. He advises NOT to buy an EV but to rent (PCH/PCP) as the Technology has a less than ten year lifespan.

 

He also wouldn't answer any further questions but has also said, "you will be fuelling your vehicle with tap water before you retire". I am 53 next month.

 

Currently the 1.5 hybrid looks possible best & can be tuned past 200bhp without the throwing in the EV on top

[nickcoll]

Yes, I can quite believe that things will change in the future - it is just a question of how far into the future. If we look at things now I think personally that the choice right now and for the foreseeable future is between a conventionally fuelled vehicle (whether with some added hybrid technology or not) and an EV.

 

As I have said in posts above I don't think that there is any point at all in expecting hydrogen to be a viable fuel in the near (or even medium-term) future with what we know at present.

 

Some might believe that fusion will be all it will take to make hydrogen viable under currently available technology but I am not convinced. Firstly the discrepancy in efficiency will still be there and although fusion might produce cheaper energy it will not be free. Secondly if fusion is the answer then it won't provide it for at least the next ten (amazingly optimistic) or twenty years (still pretty optimistic).

 

We can't rule out the possibility of some really radical development although there is no real sign of anything coming along that could overcome the efficiency penalty for a good many years into the future.

 

However as always we don't know what cannot be known, and if some totally hypothetical and science fiction-y energy-less form of hydrogen production is discovered or developed then that would entirely change the game. But there is no point in basing current policy or near-term expectations on something that doesn't exist and very possibly will never exist.

 

Technology has achieved some amazing things in the past, but some things will never be possible, or alternatively may take immensely longer than we expect. Warp drive and "beaming people down" are two such examples and hydrogen as a fuel could easily be another.

 

 

[inspectorman]

Ah, the water fuelled car. This story has been running since at least the 1930s. " Water-fuelled cars have been the subject of numerous international patents, newspaper and popular science magazine articles, local television news coverage, and websites. The claims for these devices have been found to be pseudoscience and some were found to be tied to investment frauds ". So don't postpone your retirement just so you can afford one of these magnificent devices.

[Gmac983]

Hydrogen is currently being cheaply and efficiently produced close to source in the Orkney Islands (perhaps not in massive quantities right enough) from the abundance of renewable energy there so that they can store the hydrogen to turn back into on demand electricity for themselves (to charge their electric ferries for example or charge the much higher per head than average number of EV's on the islands) rather than shunting it great distances along main power lines with the associated loses. (bearing in mind most renewables sources are not close to peak demand). 

All we really need are more fuel stations equipped to handle hydrogen along side petrol and diesel and were away.

The bigger issue here is the political legislation pushing us and manufacturers towards BEVs as the only alternative rather than as an equal option along side hydrogen fuel cell powered EV's. 

Not forgetting the processes to get us all the batteries that BEVs require is not exactly clean or green either. 

Edited 25 November, 2019 by Gmac983

[Gmac983]

Also as far as charging infrastructure goes much of the grant funded charge point installations currently in progress for businesses is being done on a bare minimum bases so that private business has as little as possible to contribute to the installation costs. The problem with that is once the national fleet of EV's exponentially grows over the next few years the charge points being installed today will be swamped and need to be completely redone including all cabling/transformers as they cannot be expanded upon when the system hasn't been future proofed for expansion which costs money neither the governor grants or private business is willing to cover right now. 

Edited 25 November, 2019 by Gmac983

[nickcoll]

33 minutes ago, Gmac983 said:

Hydrogen is currently being cheaply and efficiently produced close to source in the Orkney Islands (perhaps not in massive quantities right enough) from the abundance of renewable energy there.

 

The key to your example is the abundance of renewable energy they have, and the need to store it. When you have an excess of renewable energy and need to store it, turning it into hydrogen might be a reasonable way of doing it. Particularly if you are doing so exactly where you are using it. But why is this very particular use-case applicable to getting power to vehicles when there is a more efficient way of using the electrical energy than hydrogen?

 

And in what way exactly is political legislation pushing us towards battery rather than hydrogen? The purchase grant is equally available for both.

 

I entirely agree that batteries are not very green, but then again hardly anything about building or running any car is green. Hydrogen-fuelled cars might be slightly better, but taking everything into account that is by far not enough to overcome the other issues.

 

As far as your further point is concerned about the charging infrastructure - absolutely agree that this is a big challenge. But at least you can transport electricity pretty easily with nothing more than a cable, whereas to implement a safe hydrogen distribution system at scale will be a very much bigger challenge. For example, would you want a hydrogen filling station next door to you?

 

Nothing about any of this is perfect, it is all about what is the least imperfect.

[Gmac983]

With the Beatrice wind farm completed this summer it is a particularly relevant point for the north coast of Scotland along with all our other renewables enterprises across Scotland. Rather than long distance main power lines why don't the communities affected by renewables keep their generated power by turning it into hydrogen for local distribution (added bonus of generating much needed alternative employment in areas that often badly need it) rather than paying consortiums and private owners to shut down their wind turbines or tidal arrays when no demand and produce hydrogen instead at off-peak. 

 

Manufacturers and therefore by default the buying public are being taken down the rechargeable battery EV and associated charging infrastructure route by political legislation (pretty obvious really, why is there readily available charge point grants instead of one's for hydrogen filling stations? Yes there have been some for hydrogen filling stations but nothing like the total money offered for charge points) otherwise manufacturers wouldn't have bothered and continued to refine the old piston banger instead, from a business profit making stand point they were doing just fine without needing the cost of developing electric cars in whatever form before politicians forced them. 

 

As far as safety of hydrogen is concerned what's the difference between the safety of modern day petrol stations and tankers and their hydrogen equivalents. We're along way past the hindenburg. 

Edited 25 November, 2019 by Gmac983

[nickcoll]

Beatrice wind farm and others - simply wrong because you are instantly throwing away a significant amount of the energy the instant you turn it into hydrogen. Do you honestly think there will ever be sufficient SURPLUS electricity produced to be able to afford to do that to the degree necessary to switch over all vehicles to hydrogen, or that it will be cost-effective in comparison to electricity stored in batteries?

 

Hydrogen filling stations: why could they not simply be retro-fitted into existing filling stations? Then it is a simple financial investment for the filling station owner like any other.

[Gmac983]

1 hour ago, nickcoll said:

Beatrice wind farm and others - simply wrong because you are instantly throwing away a significant amount of the energy the instant you turn it into hydrogen. Do you honestly think there will ever be sufficient SURPLUS electricity produced to be able to afford to do that to the degree necessary to switch over all vehicles to hydrogen, or that it will be cost-effective in comparison to electricity stored in batteries?

 

Hydrogen filling stations: why could they not simply be retro-fitted into existing filling stations? Then it is a simple financial investment for the filling station owner like any other.

 

Not "simply wrong" at all.. 

I presume then you are not aware that wind turbine consortiums and owners are frequently being paid not to produce electricity at certain times so obviously then there must be a surplus capacity to generate electricity. It is also quite inefficient to shunt electricity hundreds of miles to peak usage areas rather than using it close to source.

 

5 hours ago, Gmac983 said:

All we really need are more fuel stations equipped to handle hydrogen along side petrol and diesel and were away.

 

I already said that it should be no bother for fuel stations to incorporate hydrogen in along side petrol/diesel. 

 

At no point have I said anywhere that battery or hydrogen should be dominant, they need to stand together equally. 

The way I see it, battery is fine for routine commuting where the vehicle in question is always in range of home recharging. 

And hydrogen coming in to play for rural and long distance users. Also much better for haulage, agriculture and plant equipment on site usage. 

 

 

Edited 25 November, 2019 by Gmac983

[Ootohere]

There are smart people and businesses, the issue is politicians and their sponsors.

 

 

 

 

 

[nickcoll]

3 hours ago, Gmac983 said:

 

there must be a surplus capacity to generate electricity. It is also quite inefficient to shunt electricity hundreds of miles to peak usage areas rather than using it close to source.

 

 

Surplus capacity, maybe, but not in the quantity necessary to create enough hydrogen for it to power motor vehicles. We would have to divert renewable generation from other uses to make that viable.

 

It is definitely not 100% efficient to transport electricity, I agree, but it is vastly more efficient than the losses involved in both generating and transporting hydrogen. I accept that Hydrogen may have a limited part to play where other technologies are unsuitable, but you will recall that my initial post was in response to a post which suggested that hydrogen was the "logical way forward". I hold to my view that in general it is not, because of its high efficiency deficit.

[Ootohere]

@nickcoll

You seem to miss the point.

Renewables generation is switched off due to the lack of storage and Interconnectors.

Not enough Hydro Storage schemes or batteries.  Generating Electricity is easy.   England needs to get on with doing more of it.

 

Issue for Germany is that they are poor in energy production and have to buy in electricity, gas and oil and the biggest manufacturers VW, Daimler-Benz & BMW put their investments into petrols and diesels, and only BMW acted quickly, VW were decades behind and still are.

Daimler-Benz got a shift on and turned out Hybrids and EV's while VW are still having their Investors Qatar scratch their arses.

[Gmac983]

7 hours ago, nickcoll said:

 

Surplus capacity, maybe, but not in the quantity necessary to create enough hydrogen for it to power motor vehicles. We would have to divert renewable generation from other uses to make that viable.

 

It is definitely not 100% efficient to transport electricity, I agree, but it is vastly more efficient than the losses involved in both generating and transporting hydrogen. I accept that Hydrogen may have a limited part to play where other technologies are unsuitable, but you will recall that my initial post was in response to a post which suggested that hydrogen was the "logical way forward". I hold to my view that in general it is not, because of its high efficiency deficit.

 

Just out of curiosity, where will all the electricity come from to charge all of these battery EV's (as numbers swell over the next few years)? When everyone comes home from work and immediately plugs them into charge all at the same time at what is already a peak time. 

 

Scotland is effectively on track to be 100% renewable sufficient in the next couple of years in electricity production (obviously there will still be traditional power sources there for redundancy cover) . Renewables produce electricity regardless of peak or low demand so during off-peak its a no brainer to use that surplus to generate hydrogen rather paying to shut down the turbines instead. 

Renewables are a main power source now and not a minority anymore. 

 

I presume you do know how the national grid works in so far as power is shunted around to meet demand and power stations are ramped up to meet this peak demand with hydro schemes coming on to boost supply at these times and then at off-peak, production is ramped down with any surplus power in the grid often used to pump hydro water back to head for the next peak usage. 

So why not use the abundant surplus of power for hydrogen production rather than squandering it away. 

 

[nickcoll]

2 hours ago, Roottootemoot said:

@nickcoll

You seem to miss the point.

Renewables generation is switched off due to the lack of storage and Interconnectors.

 

I'm not sure exactly which point you think I'm missing. I agree entirely that storage could play a part in efficient renewable generation and did say that hydrogen could possibly be a part of that if used locally, effectively as a battery (although I suspect there will be other more efficient technologies for that, maybe such as conventional batteries, molten salt, compressed air, or flywheels). My point was that I sincerely doubt that the amount of surplus generation will be sufficient to generate hydrogen in the quantity needed to switch the country over to using it to power vehicles at any scale, rather than using that electricity more efficiently to charge batteries.

 

Where is your evidence for the "abundant surplus of power"? Given that the capacity of quick response generation (which can be turned off when not needed as quickly as it can be turned on when it is) is significantly greater than all renewable generation, it is hard to see why there would ever be any significant amount of renewable generation going to waste.

 

Quote

I presume you do know how the national grid works in so far as power is shunted around to meet demand and power stations are ramped up to meet this peak demand with hydro schemes coming on to boost supply at these times and then at off-peak, production is ramped down with any surplus power in the grid often used to pump hydro water back to head for the next peak usage. 

 

So why not use the abundant surplus of power for hydrogen production rather than squandering it away. 

 

Using any energy for pumped storage is not squandering it. It is one part of the balancing action that you describe which is why there is not an abundant surplus of power which can be used to generate the vast amounts of hydrogen which would be needed if it were ever to be a significant contributor to vehicle power.

 

One further point is that if we were ever in a position to generate large amounts of hydrogen I think it is much more likely that it would be employed in fuelling aircraft where its high energy density would be a much more critical factor.

[Gmac983]

Again you seem to be glossing over the fact that the majority of Scotlands power is renewable... 

If for example once Scotlands power is 100% renewable (which it will be soon). 

What happens with wind turbines and and tidal arrays that are generating that 100% of our power at off-peak times? Do we just switch them all off? And pay the companies to do so... complete nonsense! 

Conventional power stations have a minimum amount they can ramp down to during off-peak which still exceeds demand at those times and is therefore used to pump hydro water back to its head source. That's agreed. 

However Wind turbines and tidal arrays running flat out driven by the prevailing conditions cannot do that and are not really designed to be forced to run at reduced speeds, so it makes sense to use that power does it not. 

You don't get much more efficient in terms of bulk storage and transportation than a liquid or a gas, the suggestion of conventional batteries and flywheels for this is crazy. 

 

I think we shall have to agree to disagree here. 

Edited 26 November, 2019 by Gmac983

[inspectorman]

Not wishing to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of turbines/transmission/Scottish politics...... just to point out liquid hydrogen needs significantly more infrastructure than the current fleet of tanks, tankers and petrol stations do. And it is incredibly fugitive - a posh word for saying it leaks like mad. For which you need a whole new and exciting technology capable of keeping the stuff where it's supposed to be.  Refrigeration, insulation, new sealing, new tanks.. or you try to go for compressed hydrogen. In the UK, petrol station owners would be most unlikely to change or add to their storage without massive subsidy. But the water only exhaust would be nice.

[Ootohere]

The UK is busy paying Electricity Generators not to generate as the Grid uses the expensive imported power that is contracted to be bought and used.

http://gridwatch.co.uk

 

[Gmac983]

45 minutes ago, inspectorman said:

Not wishing to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of turbines/transmission/Scottish politics...... just to point out liquid hydrogen needs significantly more infrastructure than the current fleet of tanks, tankers and petrol stations do. And it is incredibly fugitive - a posh word for saying it leaks like mad. For which you need a whole new and exciting technology capable of keeping the stuff where it's supposed to be.  Refrigeration, insulation, new sealing, new tanks.. or you try to go for compressed hydrogen. In the UK, petrol station owners would be most unlikely to change or add to their storage without massive subsidy. But the water only exhaust would be nice.

 

Nobody said it would be easy or cheap to achieve, whether it's rolling out a fit for purpose charging infrastructure or hydrogen and everything which that requires. 

 

As @Roottootemoot has just said, UK is paying to import electricity whilst paying renewables to stop. Total madness. 

Edited 26 November, 2019 by Gmac983

[nickcoll]

1 hour ago, Gmac983 said:

 

Nobody said it would be easy or cheap to achieve, whether it's rolling out a fit for purpose charging infrastructure or hydrogen and everything which that requires. 

 

 

 

It's all relative, and as @inspectorman has just said, the scale of the challenge of implementing a hydrogen infrastructure from scratch is much larger than beefing up the electricity grid.

 

Quote

As @Roottootemoot has just said, UK is paying to import electricity whilst paying renewables to stop. Total madness. 

 

Where exactly are you getting the evidence from that renewables are being paid to stop at the exact same time that electricity is being imported?

 

As you know (from your previous posts) running the grid is a big balancing act which involves managing the different resources. There are all sorts of payments involved across the different generation technologies, including payments to conventional power generation for not generating (rolling standby and the like). However it really depends on how you want to present these things, and whether you have a point to make which is served by increasing the significance through sensationalisation. I strongly suspect this is one example of this. 

 

You may (or maybe not) have got your information about how "mad" this is from an article in The Telegraph, which is well known for continually trying to rubbish any effort to move the environmental agenda forwards. However I found an article from January 2018 that says "Wind Farms paid £100m to switch power off" in 2017, couched in scandalous tones. Any decent journalist seeking a balanced conclusion would immediately seek to put that into context, but this article does not even start to attempt do so.

 

In 2017 the UK generated 49,607 GWh (or 49.6 TWh) of electricity from wind. The article quotes the compensation payments as being £70 per MWh. £100m therefore represents 1.43 GWh of generation, or just under .003% of the electricity generated by wind in that year. Not quite as scandalous once you get it into perspective!

 

In addition the payments for availability to Fast Reserve during that year were approximately £50m - these are all just costs of maintaining a balanced electricity supply system and only worthy of note in themselves if you want to make a political point!

 

The Grid is not perfect and as a result there are extra costs that have to be carried, but let's try and keep things in perspective - the overall production of electricity in the UK for 2017 was around 338 TWh (figures vary slightly). The average cost of that electricity is difficult to estimate because every source is different. However £65/MWh is a good rough figure, leading to a total cost of generation of the UK's electricity in 2017 of around £22bn. Figures like £100m and £50m are way below being even rounding errors and are simply part of what is involved in making everything work.

 

Regarding importation of electricity; this is also a simple function of the balancing process. This was around 6% of electricity supplied in 2017, which is almost exactly the same as it was in the 1990s. What's so wrong with that?

Edited 26 November, 2019 by nickcoll

[Gmac983]

@nickcoll

The telegraph is a paper I have never so much as picked up once in my life, so I have not read that article or indeed Googled for any of my information. 

 

I didn't say at any point that the change over was at the exact same moment, merely that it's a ludicrous situation to be importing electricity when we can generated all we need and potential store in some form or other rather than paying to stop turbines that have been subsidised in the first place. You are just being obtuse. 

 

I actually know one of the land owners who has been payed additional fees as part of his land leasing agreement with energy company when the turbines have been ordered to stop. No google warrioring or sensationalism required for that info. 

 

[Gmac983]

In some sort of attempt to conclude this debate and dangerously swerve this thread back on topic. 

I think we can say we are in agreement that the way forward is absolutely EV's in some form or another (battery, hydrogen, whatever... or dark matter if you like...) We can debate this 'til the cows come home as in the end we'll all have to be good little boys and girls and comply with the legislation we end up with in any event (pay for it and like it), be that rechargeable batteries at charging points/stations or hydrogen fuel cell or whatever else that may come along... 

 

In regards the octy Mk4. I'll stick with my view that VAG and their brand hierarchy have dropped the ball by not allowing the allready in use e-golf tech to be used in the new octy. Probably scared of losing crossbrand sales on their new VW ID3 model. 

Edited 26 November, 2019 by Gmac983

[nickcoll]

It's all about timing and balancing the demands on the Grid. Why is that so hard to accept?

[nickcoll]

Ok, let's bury the hatchet and agree on that overarching ambition. A positive note to end on.