Driving to a Hydrogen Future

On Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 10:24:32 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote :

rote:

h their hats. Not one person has indicated they actually understand what i s important regarding a hydrogen pipeline. We can talk about this aspect o r that, but we don't know what determines the utility of piping hydrogen.

ues.

ts you to make irrational claims.

When you can't say anything else, you like to play the "emotional" card. I t doesn't invalidate my point.

that

ay,.

at a

h temperature superconductors immersed in liquid hydrogen, would make more sense, though perhaps not all the way across Canada.

rate electricity where there's lots of sun and no cloud, and shipping the e nergy captured out by electrolysing water to hydrogen and putting that into pipes, tankers or big tanks, depending on whether you want to ship the ene rgy locally or overseas, or store it until the sun isn't shining and the wi nd isn't blowing.

en into transportation.

s.

logy is not yet practical.

able, but that's economies of scale for you.

So which is it, practical or not practical? You can't say it is both.

It's not at all practical at this time because the cars aren't available in any numbers and the infrastructure isn't in place. It would only be possi ble in the future if huge investments were made in fueling infrastructure. Investments that will only be made when the horse is in front of the cart meaning there is a path of clear demand to justify the large investments... nationwide investments.

I can't see that happening any time soon. It's not unlike the color tv pro blem. They coudn't sell sets because there wasn't demand because there was little color programming. The studios didn't want to invest the money in color programming because there weren't many color sets sold so no market f or advertisers to pay the added costs. It took quite some time before colo r TV became common either in the sets sold or the programming.

t the hydrogen to fuel them from any kind of renewable energy source, but t here are proof of principle electrolytic cells that can generate hydrogen.

What does that have to do with anything? Being technically possible is a l ong way from being practical.

long way from having that working on a useful scale.

to make them cheaper and longer-lived.

to support hydrogen cars is a much bigger task than supporting electric ca rs.

Yes, that is no small feat.

drogen recharging station at a few isolated gas stations.

There are lots of technologies, some much better than hydrogen... such as B EVs.

Rick C.

I'd have to think about that. IIRC, natural gas was less explosive than town gas. Would going to town gas be as easy? Can you just change the gas without modifying all the devices that use it? Didn't that happen at a time when gas appliances were all manually operated?

Won't optical flame sensors fail? What would happen if I hooked my gas furnace up to hydrogen and hit the switch? Unless it works perfectly as is, with current pressure and orifice sizes, it will be a nightmare.

The Prius would have been dead in the water had it not been able to drive up to any existing gas station and fuel up. That EXISTING, pervasive dual electricity/gasoline infrastructure made starting the transition to electric possible. It solved the chicken/egg problem. We already had two chickens.

Come back with a hydrogen infrastructure and we'll be ready to try it in cars.

Doesn't that sound like a problem?

I'd like to hear more about that. You need seriously high pressure OR seriously low temperature. If you ship a tanker of liquid Hydrogen half way around the world, how much is left when you get there? And how much new infrastructure happens at the destination to accept the load?

How am I gonna store it in a car? If you're set up for cold storage, you can't keep high pressure. As it evaporates, where does it go?

Sounds like the garage will become a dangerous place. Hope the garage door opener doesn't spark.

That can change when we develop new technology to store significant quantities in low volume at low pressure without venting it.

We need to accumulate usable energy near the demand. There are places where there is abundant wind or solar. For the rest of us, there's nuclear. If we'd quit fretting over it and just do it.

At the moment, Hydrogen seems like a pipe dream. I'm not saying we shouldn't be workin' on it, just don't divert too much from shorter-term possibilities.

nal

Not applicable, though, because that's electricity from the fuel cells made by UTC power, and those are intended for cogeneration (the 'waste' heat is a second usefu l product).

There's no thermodynamic reason a fuel cell can't hit 100% energy efficienc y. What matters to a UTC installation is maintenance interval (circa 10 year c atalyst lifetime), not portability or electric efficiency.

On Sunday, October 28, 2018 at 4:46:49 PM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com w rote:

te:

rom Peter to pay Paul. The whole point of the battery in a car is to power the car. Not many cars are sitting around waiting for the odd chance they are needed.

the car batteries as network backup stops the cars charging if the generat ors are heavily loaded - cloud passing over the solar cells.

attery, so - in most cases - it would be practical steal some charge from a fully charged battery to make up a brief network shortfall.

ving it, but you only spend 5% of your time driving the car, and the batter y is sitting there doing every little - except getting recharged for the re maining 95% of the time.

the same illogical points.

ngness to take them seriously, but that doesn't make them illogical.

ointless if they aren't parked at times that make sense to use them as batt eries.

If they are parked for 95% of the time, this is likely to include a period where at least some of them could be useful as batteries.

the time, it doesn't spend all that time getting recharged.

owed to mess around with the energy stored in the battery.

Only from your - somewhat bizarre - po9intof view.

tself, for the inconvenience and profit on top. OR... they can just buy th eir own damn batteries and not waste money trying to bribe people to let th eir cars be used in this manner.

Investing in batteries when there is already a huge pile sitting unused in parked cars doesn't make a lot of sense.

the car battery until there was plenty of power around, and a more active system would be able to take back some energy from an almost fully charged battery - the threshold charge level would be negotiable and the grid would have to pay more if it could take the charge level down to say 50% as oppo sed to say 90%.

ng of the usage of the cars and the need for their batteries by the grid. Or you hand wave about things working out on the "average" while ignoring t hat there would be major fluctuations as common events happens in people's lives. Just as commuting roads tend to be less traveled in the summer beca use people are on vacation, many other things will disrupt the "averages" o f availability of car batteries.

Of course it will. What you neglect is that 95% of the time parked is a lot of time, and that a pile of batteries capable of delivering about four tim es a much power as the whole generating system is a lot of batteries, capab le of soaking up a whole lot of deviation from the mean.

t on the average it would be some small portion of the aggregate car batter y capacity.

electric cars, the aggregate battery capacity - in terms of power delivery - would be some three to four times the capacity of the grid.

seem to recall the power required to charge cars would only be a fraction o f the grid capacity. A number of others calculated poor results by using w rong conversions.

I've spelled out the logic. If you can find an error, tell us about it.

is power level, but that should be plenty for short term load shifting.

s needed because they will be driving!

Cars spend 95% of their time parked. If they were all on the road at once t hey'd have to be stacked several cars deep (at least in major cities).

hen you aren't using it. They'd pay for the privilege, lowering the cost of the capital tied up in the car.

y *expensive* expendable item.

idents long before the car has worn out.

And your counter evidence is?

batteries for the utility companies. If the car owners aren't compensated for the wear, plus the inconvenience plus a profit, why would they do it? With the added costs relative to just buying batteries, why would the utili ties do it?

Capital invested in batteries costs interest. People are going to be inves ting that capital in batteries that they are going to be using - dischargin g - about 5% pf the time and recharging for another 5% of time. They'll pro bably be willing to sell access to that capital investment for less that th an the utilities companies would need to pay. They've had to make the capit al investment to get the car, and anything they get back will look like a b onus.

t comes to some $0.10 a mile. Letting the utility company discharge and ch arge them every day will likely cut their life in half meaning the cost to the car owner will not be cheap.

aking on board.

Your "analysis" seems to consist of a visceral loathing for the idea. Not a lot of correctness there.

id by the grid for allowing them to exploit a capital asset when you weren' t using it.

It sure looks like a capital investment when you buy it. It's value degrade s with time, which makes it a consumable, but you seem to have an exaggerat ed idea of how much the utility companies would degrade the batteries by u sing them as back-up stores.

lve to be charged faster (a significant advantage on trips and for owners w ho can't charge at home) this is irrelevant.

with a lot of people and many don't have the ability to string a cord alon g the sidewalk, down the street to their car.

In Canada parking meters have a power socket which you can plug into to kee p your radiator from freezing up. It wouldn't be a big deal to put a socket with a charge monitor and a link to the credit card payment network on eve ry recognised parking space. You wouldn't have it in the country, but any place where it was worth controlling parking it would be worth adding a charging point.

o charge them any place where you can legally park. Fast charging stations are modelled on existing gas stations, and won't be anything like as numero us once electric cars get to be ubiquitous.

barely park, much less have a charger handy.

So they don't take their cars there. The centre of Sydney is just such a pl ace, and the centre of Amsterdam was worse.

ay get cheap and convenient enough that people will hire a long distance ca r if they need to make a long trip - but they won't be anything like as ubi quitous as today's gas stations.

to pay the car owner fair compensation which won't be any cheaper than buyi ng their own batteries. Since it is likely there will at some point be a d ifferent optimization for batteries used to support the utility grid, why w ould the power company want to rent sub-optimal car batteries rather than l owering their costs by using batteries optimized for power grid use?

ctured in huge volumes, specialised grid back-up batteries in no more than a tenth of that volume, so their unit price will be twice as high.

hem affordable. Your 10x volume = 2x price is a bit specious.

It's a well known rule of thumb. It has worked reliably for several generat ions of solar cells.

Of course it isn't universal.

uction volume only creates shortages driving UP the costs.

Which is where the high volume producers find alternative materials.

Why do you think the nanotechnologist are so busy finding cheaper materials that work almost as well at platinum and paladium?

hey could have a reliable capacity at the lowest possible cost rather than having to pay the public for the inconvenience of not having the full range of the car available and also paying them a profit.

car batteries. Researchers may come up with marginally better solutions for grid back-up batteries, but it's likely to languish in a JVC versus Betama x volume conquers technical advantage scenario.

nce even with the same batteries using cars is more expensive.

Why?

hat, they don't want to have to worry about an unplanned use being prevente d by the car having insufficient charge.

ery.

dealt with by throwing money at them. It's a low frequency problem, and it makes sense to budget around the predictable.

ing their own grid batteries.

You keep on ignoring the fact that when we get close to 100% electric cars there will be a lot more car batteries around than the utility companies wi ll actually need. With that level of over-supply, the individual car batter ies don't need to be reliably available.

costs.

make the deal attractive. It will never be attractive to you, but others m ay require less generous compensation. That's what the free market is for.

Why do you think that?

ar owner is too nervous or too rapacious.

There will be enough car batteries around that "reliable" won't be an issue .

"Cheaper" depends on what the utility companies have to pay to get access t o enough batteries,and electric cars will potentially offer amny more than they will need.

their own batteries.

investing that capital. We've got a free market economy that optimises thos e choices over all the people making the choices - not just you.

hat you continue to ignore.

ir unplanned usage *at all*?

that they would not otherwise get will influence their choice.

about four times as much power as the generating system that kept them cha rged.

round in cars is about 30% of the power currently generated by the grid.

You can do the same google searches that I did. If I remember rightly I eve n posted the links.

, as internal combustion engine powered cars are now, the power delivery ca pacity of all the batteries in all the cars would be six times the current grid generating capacity. The grid generating capacity would have to be rai sed by 30% to keep all those cars charged, which means that the batteries i n all the cars would be able to deliver 4.6 times the capacity of the enlar ged grid generating capacity.

You haven't got time to identify the errors? Or you didn't have time to fin d them? Probably the latter, because the logic is sound, even if you can't follow it.

d at off peak times. Isn't that pretty clear???

It may be clear, but it is also false. With anything approaching 100% elect ric cars, the current generating capacity would be overloaded by about 30%.

xplain it.

The current generation of cars, active for 5% of the time consume energy (b y burning gasoline) equivalent to 30% of current generating capacity. If th ey were all in action at once they would be pushing out 20 times s much pow er.

about 4.4 times the enlarged grid generating capacity.

the time.

It's useful simplifying assumption.

You have to stop using a car when the charge level reaches the threshold se t by the owner. Then your generating capacity also falls off. When you de plete all the cars charge your additional generating capacity drops to zero .

Obviously. The grid is going to have other ways of generating more or less power. Car batteries are fine for smoothing over short term variations.

By which you seem to mean, when it fits your preconceptions.

l picture. Tiny factoids in isolation don't prove anything. The 95% numbe r is the least useful of all.

Find your own number - and justify it - if you don't like it.

ound 100 kW. To exploit a higher rate will require even more expensive cha rgers... at HOME.

Why? The whole point about high charging rates to to match putting gasolin e into a gas tank at a filling station.

If you car is parked on a charger for 95% of the time you could - in theory - charge it at a 1/19th of the rate at which you discharge it when you are driving.

economy of scale if the utility simply buys their own batteries saving mor e money on top of the savings of not paying the car owners profit.

The little dischargers working at the 20 or 30 amperes (5kW or 7.5kW) that you can get out of a domestic wiring set-up are dead cheap consumer items. They aren't the 100kW devices you need to substitute for gasoline nozzle at a filling station.

ging an electric vehicle with filling the tank on a gas burner.

laim *I* am the one obsessed with "high current chargers". It doesn't matt er how fast the batteries will charge/discharge if you can't get that power into the grid through high current charger/dischargers.

Sure. But you don't have to get it in at 100kW.

slowly while it is parked. Getting a mains electricity to a parked car is a very different problem from getting gasoline into one.

e as well??? Then why all the talk about the "power delivery capacity"???

The electricity generating system has to deliver enough power to charge all the cars that want to be recharged every day. That would add about 30% on top of the load it currently deals with.

This is true no matter how fast, or how slowly, the charging is done. Life gets a lot easier if you chose not to go for 100kW recharge rates as the de fault option.

ep the network balanced.

ess. If it is charged up by solar during the day it will then be driven ho me and will only be available for part of the afternoon peak usage time.

ost of the day. Assuming that your pattern of use is the only popular one i sn't a great way of working out actual patterns of use.

es with less opportunity to soak up the sun provided power or releasing it to the grid.

e isn't a battery-draining long trip.

range battery, why would they not want to be able to use it when needed eve n if not expected?

If they paid that much, they wouldn't be a typical consumer.

wasted investment in the long range battery.

Atypical consumers will do all sorts of weird stuff, but they don't move th e mean around enough to matter.

to 8 pm in the winter. The commute will take the car offline for much of these peak times. Meanwhile the car will need to retain enough charge to c omplete Wthe drive back to work the next day and any lunch trips required, planned or unplanned.

where they are parked during the day. If solar cells are providing the bul k of the generating capacity, that's when electric cars are going to get re charged.

ppen when there are more of them around.

ill be charged at work from solar. The problem is getting this power from the car to the grid at the times when it is needed... mostly during the mor ning and evening drive times when the cars are more in use than any other t ime of day.

rked.

s important is ***when*** the cars are parked and not parked. Averages mea n nothing if the timing is not right. You can't seem to appreciate the fac t that most cars are in use at the same times, that thing we call "rush hou r", which inconveniently overlaps the peak electrical usage times. This is not terribly unlike the mismatch of solar power to peak demand.

me)!!! Can you internalize that?

Can you support that claim with anything that looks like evidence?

suggests that 11% of the current car pool could handle all trips if the car s were shared.

ies, but the obstacles are numerous and the likely outcome is that only a r ather small fraction of the total automotive battery capacity will be avail able for storage use.

attern - 95% of the total installed battery capacity is gong to be availabl e.

the actual times they are needed. Being parked at night is of virtually no value at all.

e the utilities can buy batteries to make that work.

They could, but if there were lots of electric cars being charged from the grid, they wouldn't have to bother.

overcoming them. Telsa battery pack in South Australia is turning out to b e great tool for short term phase and amplitude control, and has obsoleted a lot of the equipment that was being used for the job. The grid is paying at lot more for that service - about $A35 million so far - than the batter y pack is earning by buying power when it cheap and selling it when it is w orth more, which has been worth about $A1.5 million so far.

ith the hassles of using car batteries to support the grid. It saves the p ower company nothing while providing the car owner nothing in return other than possibly a break even on expenses and no compensation for the loss of utility.

that batteries can can save the power company quite a lot of money.

o save money. Congratulations. You finally understand my point.

Sadly, you missed mine, by jumping in too early. The Tesla batter y pack wa s just a stack of Tesla car batteries.

capital by buying them directly from Telsa they can save the same kind of m oney without making a significant capital investment.

n get loans and pay interest which will likely be cheaper than trying to ge t cooperation from car drivers who would have to be compensated for the los s of utility of their batteries, the shorter lifespan and of course, some p rofit. Heck, I bet battery sharing wouldn't even be allowed on leased cars ... for a very good reason. The leasing company wouldn't be compensated! No utility would be interested in all the complication anyway.

eries even better than the undependable car battery availability.

lable.

It's not a single data point. It's an average over a large population of ca rs.

- $A50 millions is suggested - but it seems to be paying off.

and buys batteries designed for the purpose at the most cost effective arr angement. Utilities won't rent car batteries at the pleasure of the car ow ner.

xplained very clearly over and over. The utilities will get more reliable use from their own batteries installed specifically to do exactly what they need, when they need it at the lowest possible price. Is that clear enoug h?

It's clear, but wrong. The same batteries spread over the network at car ba ttery charging points can do exactly the same job as a bunch of them on the utility site. The problem for the utilities in having a bunch of them on the site is that they have to pay for them. If they can rent the same batte ries when they are sitting still in parked cars being recharged they can pr obably get them cheaper.

their profits are typically tied to their capital investment. So they try to maximize that, not minimize it as other for-profit companies do. Large battery farms would be exactly what they would like and support.

The Australian networkd have been caught gouging their customers by "gold-p lating" the distribution network - installing extra distribution capacity t hat they didn't actually need - and the regulator is now picky about that.

de to get their car charged during the day then keep it off the grid so the y can go on a beach holiday.... too many turn on their AC with little relie f from the car batteries - bringing down the grid.

doesn't seem to go down all that often. In fact the prolonged power failure - some hours - in South Australia that prompted the purchase of the Tesla battery pack was the result of exceptionally high winds blowing down a cru cial high voltage link, which didn't stop the Australian federal government (conservative, and heavily influenced by well-heeled coal miners) from bla ming the state government's (other party) enthusiasm for renewable power.

e availability of car batteries would be very low as many more than usual a re on the roads leaving for the beach or whatever destination they weekend at in Australia. That was actually my point.

Not one backed up by anything except your fertile imagination.

of cars will be available for supplying power to the grid.

scheme.

At a particular point, at particular times. Traffic has spatial as well as chronological diversity.

the ebb and flow and I remember when I used to work nearer to the city. Y ou can't depend on anything that involves people's daily lives. Just ask a ny restaurant owner. He will tell you that any night can be very busy just as any night can be dead. People do what they want, when they want often based on stimuli that prompts many people at the same time.

But talk to enough restaurant owners and you will find the that the peaks a verage out from place to place.

You clearly understand the emotional issue you perceive. The question is ho w many other people would see the same problem, and be worried about enough about it to reject the cash the utility companies would be offering.

On Sunday, October 28, 2018 at 4:56:24 PM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com w rote:

te:

te:

ugh their hats. Not one person has indicated they actually understand what is important regarding a hydrogen pipeline. We can talk about this aspect or that, but we don't know what determines the utility of piping hydrogen.

mpts you to make irrational claims.

It doesn't invalidate my point.

I post links to evidence. You tell us how you feel about the subject.

You aren't actually making any points, just telling us about your visceral reactions.

BEVs.

I'm inclined to agree. What does seem to be driving the current enthusiasm for hydrogen technology in Australia is the prospect of shipping tanker loa ds of liquid hydrogen to Japan.

Battery electric vehicles transfer about 85% of the energy generated by the utilities into energy that gets your car where you want to go.

Hydrogen would deliver about 25% of the energy. It's not an attractive opti on.

rote:

from Peter to pay Paul. The whole point of the battery in a car is to pow er the car. Not many cars are sitting around waiting for the odd chance th ey are needed.

of the car batteries as network backup stops the cars charging if the gener ators are heavily loaded - cloud passing over the solar cells.

battery, so - in most cases - it would be practical steal some charge from a fully charged battery to make up a brief network shortfall.

riving it, but you only spend 5% of your time driving the car, and the batt ery is sitting there doing every little - except getting recharged for the remaining 95% of the time.

ke the same illogical points.

lingness to take them seriously, but that doesn't make them illogical.

pointless if they aren't parked at times that make sense to use them as ba tteries.

d where at least some of them could be useful as batteries.

of the time, it doesn't spend all that time getting recharged.

llowed to mess around with the energy stored in the battery.

itself, for the inconvenience and profit on top. OR... they can just buy their own damn batteries and not waste money trying to bribe people to let their cars be used in this manner.

in parked cars doesn't make a lot of sense.

ng the car battery until there was plenty of power around, and a more activ e system would be able to take back some energy from an almost fully charge d battery - the threshold charge level would be negotiable and the grid wou ld have to pay more if it could take the charge level down to say 50% as op posed to say 90%.

ming of the usage of the cars and the need for their batteries by the grid. Or you hand wave about things working out on the "average" while ignoring that there would be major fluctuations as common events happens in people' s lives. Just as commuting roads tend to be less traveled in the summer be cause people are on vacation, many other things will disrupt the "averages" of availability of car batteries.

ot of time, and that a pile of batteries capable of delivering about four t imes a much power as the whole generating system is a lot of batteries, cap able of soaking up a whole lot of deviation from the mean.

bet on the average it would be some small portion of the aggregate car batt ery capacity.

I seem to recall the power required to charge cars would only be a fraction of the grid capacity. A number of others calculated poor results by using wrong conversions.

this power level, but that should be plenty for short term load shifting.

mes needed because they will be driving!

they'd have to be stacked several cars deep (at least in major cities).

when you aren't using it. They'd pay for the privilege, lowering the cost of the capital tied up in the car.

ery *expensive* expendable item.

ccidents long before the car has worn out.

g batteries for the utility companies. If the car owners aren't compensate d for the wear, plus the inconvenience plus a profit, why would they do it? With the added costs relative to just buying batteries, why would the uti lities do it?

esting that capital in batteries that they are going to be using - discharg ing - about 5% pf the time and recharging for another 5% of time. They'll p robably be willing to sell access to that capital investment for less that than the utilities companies would need to pay. They've had to make the cap ital investment to get the car, and anything they get back will look like a bonus.

hat comes to some $0.10 a mile. Letting the utility company discharge and charge them every day will likely cut their life in half meaning the cost t o the car owner will not be cheap.

taking on board.

a lot of correctness there.

paid by the grid for allowing them to exploit a capital asset when you were n't using it.

des with time, which makes it a consumable, but you seem to have an exagger ated idea of how much the utility companies would degrade the batteries by using them as back-up stores.

volve to be charged faster (a significant advantage on trips and for owners who can't charge at home) this is irrelevant.

on with a lot of people and many don't have the ability to string a cord al ong the sidewalk, down the street to their car.

eep your radiator from freezing up. It wouldn't be a big deal to put a sock et with a charge monitor and a link to the credit card payment network on e very recognised

t was worth controlling parking it would be worth adding a charging point.

to charge them any place where you can legally park. Fast charging station s are modelled on existing gas stations, and won't be anything like as nume rous once electric cars get to be ubiquitous.

n barely park, much less have a charger handy.

place, and the centre of Amsterdam was worse.

may get cheap and convenient enough that people will hire a long distance car if they need to make a long trip - but they won't be anything like as u biquitous as today's gas stations.

d to pay the car owner fair compensation which won't be any cheaper than bu ying their own batteries. Since it is likely there will at some point be a different optimization for batteries used to support the utility grid, why would the power company want to rent sub-optimal car batteries rather than lowering their costs by using batteries optimized for power grid use?

factured in huge volumes, specialised grid back-up batteries in no more tha n a tenth of that volume, so their unit price will be twice as high.

them affordable. Your 10x volume = 2x price is a bit specious.

ations of solar cells.

oduction volume only creates shortages driving UP the costs.

ls that work almost as well at platinum and paladium?

they could have a reliable capacity at the lowest possible cost rather tha n having to pay the public for the inconvenience of not having the full ran ge of the car available and also paying them a profit.

f car batteries. Researchers may come up with marginally better solutions f or grid back-up batteries, but it's likely to languish in a JVC versus Beta max volume conquers technical advantage scenario.

since even with the same batteries using cars is more expensive.

that, they don't want to have to worry about an unplanned use being preven ted by the car having insufficient charge.

ttery.

ed.

e dealt with by throwing money at them. It's a low frequency problem, and i t makes sense to budget around the predictable.

using their own grid batteries.

s there will be a lot more car batteries around than the utility companies will actually need. With that level of over-supply, the individual car batt eries don't need to be reliably available.

ir costs.

to make the deal attractive. It will never be attractive to you, but others may require less generous compensation. That's what the free market is for .

car owner is too nervous or too rapacious.

ue.

to enough batteries,and electric cars will potentially offer amny more tha n they will need.

ng their own batteries.

m investing that capital. We've got a free market economy that optimises th ose choices over all the people making the choices - not just you.

what you continue to ignore.

heir unplanned usage *at all*?

ny that they would not otherwise get will influence their choice.

er about four times as much power as the generating system that kept them c harged.

around in cars is about 30% of the power currently generated by the grid.

ven posted the links.

me, as internal combustion engine powered cars are now, the power delivery capacity of all the batteries in all the cars would be six times the curren t grid generating capacity. The grid generating capacity would have to be r aised by 30% to keep all those cars charged, which means that the batteries in all the cars would be able to deliver 4.6 times the capacity of the enl arged grid generating capacity.

ind them? Probably the latter, because the logic is sound, even if you can' t follow it.

ged at off peak times. Isn't that pretty clear???

ctric cars, the current generating capacity would be overloaded by about 30 %.

explain it.

(by burning gasoline) equivalent to 30% of current generating capacity. If they were all in action at once they would be pushing out 20 times s much p ower.

es current electricity generating capacity, as should be obvious.

or about 4.4 times the enlarged grid generating capacity.

l the time.

You have to stop using a car when the charge level reaches the threshold set by the owner. Then your generating capacity also falls off. When you deplete all the cars charge your additional generating capacity drops to ze ro.

s power. Car batteries are fine for smoothing over short term variations.

eal picture. Tiny factoids in isolation don't prove anything. The 95% num ber is the least useful of all.

around 100 kW. To exploit a higher rate will require even more expensive c hargers... at HOME.

ine into a gas tank at a filling station.

ry - charge it at a 1/19th of the rate at which you discharge it when you a re driving.

he economy of scale if the utility simply buys their own batteries saving m ore money on top of the savings of not paying the car owners profit.

t you can get out of a domestic wiring set-up are dead cheap consumer items . They aren't the 100kW devices you need to substitute for gasoline nozzle at a filling station.

arging an electric vehicle with filling the tank on a gas burner.

claim *I* am the one obsessed with "high current chargers". It doesn't ma tter how fast the batteries will charge/discharge if you can't get that pow er into the grid through high current charger/dischargers.

e slowly while it is parked. Getting a mains electricity to a parked car is a very different problem from getting gasoline into one.

rge as well??? Then why all the talk about the "power delivery capacity"?? ?

ll the cars that want to be recharged every day. That would add about 30% o n top of the load it currently deals with.

e gets a lot easier if you chose not to go for 100kW recharge rates as the default option.

keep the network balanced.

tless. If it is charged up by solar during the day it will then be driven home and will only be available for part of the afternoon peak usage time.

most of the day. Assuming that your pattern of use is the only popular one isn't a great way of working out actual patterns of use.

ries with less opportunity to soak up the sun provided power or releasing i t to the grid.

use isn't a battery-draining long trip.

g range battery, why would they not want to be able to use it when needed e ven if not expected?

e wasted investment in the long range battery.

the mean around enough to matter.

ed where they are parked during the day. If solar cells are providing the b ulk of the generating capacity, that's when electric cars are going to get recharged.

happen when there are more of them around.

will be charged at work from solar. The problem is getting this power fro m the car to the grid at the times when it is needed... mostly during the m orning and evening drive times when the cars are more in use than any other time of day.

parked.

is important is ***when*** the cars are parked and not parked. Averages m ean nothing if the timing is not right. You can't seem to appreciate the f act that most cars are in use at the same times, that thing we call "rush h our", which inconveniently overlaps the peak electrical usage times. This is not terribly unlike the mismatch of solar power to peak demand.

time)!!! Can you internalize that?

ars were shared.

eries, but the obstacles are numerous and the likely outcome is that only a rather small fraction of the total automotive battery capacity will be ava ilable for storage use.

pattern - 95% of the total installed battery capacity is gong to be availa ble.

g the actual times they are needed. Being parked at night is of virtually no value at all.

y.

ure the utilities can buy batteries to make that work.

e grid, they wouldn't have to bother.

on overcoming them. Telsa battery pack in South Australia is turning out to be great tool for short term phase and amplitude control, and has obsolete d a lot of the equipment that was being used for the job. The grid is payin g at lot more for that service - about $A35 million so far - than the batt ery pack is earning by buying power when it cheap and selling it when it is worth more, which has been worth about $A1.5 million so far.

with the hassles of using car batteries to support the grid. It saves the power company nothing while providing the car owner nothing in return othe r than possibly a break even on expenses and no compensation for the loss o f utility.

as that batteries can can save the power company quite a lot of money.

to save money. Congratulations. You finally understand my point.

was just a stack of Tesla car batteries.

p capital by buying them directly from Telsa they can save the same kind of money without making a significant capital investment.

can get loans and pay interest which will likely be cheaper than trying to get cooperation from car drivers who would have to be compensated for the l oss of utility of their batteries, the shorter lifespan and of course, some profit. Heck, I bet battery sharing wouldn't even be allowed on leased ca rs... for a very good reason. The leasing company wouldn't be compensated! No utility would be interested in all the complication anyway.

tteries even better than the undependable car battery availability.

ailable.

cars.

p - $A50 millions is suggested - but it seems to be paying off.

ed and buys batteries designed for the purpose at the most cost effective a rrangement. Utilities won't rent car batteries at the pleasure of the car owner.

explained very clearly over and over. The utilities will get more reliabl e use from their own batteries installed specifically to do exactly what th ey need, when they need it at the lowest possible price. Is that clear eno ugh?

battery charging points can do exactly the same job as a bunch of them on t he utility site. The problem for the utilities in having a bunch of them o n the site is that they have to pay for them. If they can rent the same bat teries when they are sitting still in parked cars being recharged they can probably get them cheaper.

US their profits are typically tied to their capital investment. So they t ry to maximize that, not minimize it as other for-profit companies do. Lar ge battery farms would be exactly what they would like and support.

-plating" the distribution network - installing extra distribution capacity that they didn't actually need - and the regulator is now picky about that .

cide to get their car charged during the day then keep it off the grid so t hey can go on a beach holiday.... too many turn on their AC with little rel ief from the car batteries - bringing down the grid.

t doesn't seem to go down all that often. In fact the prolonged power failu re - some hours - in South Australia that prompted the purchase of the Tes la battery pack was the result of exceptionally high winds blowing down a c rucial high voltage link, which didn't stop the Australian federal governme nt (conservative, and heavily influenced by well-heeled coal miners) from b laming the state government's (other party) enthusiasm for renewable power.

The availability of car batteries would be very low as many more than usual are on the roads leaving for the beach or whatever destination they weeken d at in Australia. That was actually my point.

ur scheme.

y?

s chronological diversity.

ee the ebb and flow and I remember when I used to work nearer to the city. You can't depend on anything that involves people's daily lives. Just ask any restaurant owner. He will tell you that any night can be very busy ju st as any night can be dead. People do what they want, when they want ofte n based on stimuli that prompts many people at the same time.

average out from place to place.

ut 95% and wave your hands without actually understanding the issues involv ed in leasing the batteries in people's cars. It ain't that simple and wou ldn't be worth while to try to harness compared to just connecting batterie s to the grid!

how many other people would see the same problem, and be worried about enou gh about it to reject the cash the utility companies would be offering.

Ok, you have no real argument and have to resort to ad hominem attacks. No thing you have posted here is new and most is just trying to get some use o f the 95% statistic rather than actually explaining how it would work.

Ok, since you no longer have anything to add to the discussion I suppose it is over... again, in the same manner. You refuse to understand the issues and are in denial of the facts.

Enjoy,

Rick C.

ernal

de by UTC power, and those are intended for cogeneration (the 'waste' heat is a second useful product).

The Wikipedia article list a whole lot of fuel cell technologies, and the m ost of the technologies fall into that 40% to 60% . It's certainly not spec ific to UTC Power's cogeneration range.

ncy.

But the fact that they don't does suggest the existence of practical limita tions. Even batteries don't return 100% of the energy you put into them, th ough 85% us better than 405 to 60%.

catalyst lifetime), not portability or electric efficiency.

UTC Power is one company amongst many, and co-generation isn't the only way that fuel cells get used.

This is actually an ad hominem response. You haven't posted any links to new evidence anywhere in this thread, and I have, so my feeling is that you don't like the evidence I have found and can't find any counter evidence.

Look in the mirror. It's not as if you have found any facts at all.

"The maximum theoretical energy efficiency of a fuel cell is 83%, operating at low power density and using pure hydrogen and oxygen as reactants (assuming no heat recapture)[63] According to the World Energy Council, this compares with a maximum theoretical efficiency of

Low energy density and 100% oxygen aren't suitable for a car. Or for much of anything short of spacecraft.

But the real problem is providing the hydrogen.

That's misleading, too; there's no 'The maximum' being considered, it's only the maximum for the particular designs under scrutiny. The 'internal combustion engine' number, on the other hand, IS a thermodynamic limit.

That's wrong.

The calculation is specific to a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell but beyond that it is technology-independent.

Whit3rd does seem to see specific application content where it doesn't actually exist.

I have a bad guess, but no instant answer. Also no time to grind the numbers. There has been quite a bit of discussion on the topic on various forums in the past:

And possibly not even there.

First I've ever heard of these things. Intriguing! But why would you in the US even bother to experiment with inert propellants when you have such easy access (in most states) to conventional guns and ammunition? Plus I imagine the rate of fire must be pretty piss-poor in comparison to conventional firearms?

There is, but it's the same thing as a helium atom.

I did explain how it would work, but you produce anecdotes which you seem to think imply that it wouldn't work.

I don't understand them in a way that you find acceptable, because it doesn't fit with the way you feel about using your car.

I've produced all the facts that have been adduced here. You may complain that I don't take your opinions seriously enough, but you haven't come up with anything that looks like any kind of useful fact.

Someone is building a hydrogen fuel cell commuter ferry here. Of course they have to make it look fururistic. It's insane.

If they want to eliminate diesel dirt, they should use gasoline or CNG. Of course, the local trucks and ships emit a million times more diesel junk than this ferry will save. The entire hydrogen cycle apparently saves no pollution.

That ferry has a "boost" battery, like fuel cell cars. Sounds like fuel cells have low peak power capacity.

Futuristic??? Or maybe you really meant "fururistic"? What's futuristic about it? You mean because they didn't make it look like the Titanic???

Geeze, some people have to work pretty hard to find something to gripe about.

I think their primary goal is to make money. They are going to do that by building something that doesn't directly foul the environment, unlike your car.

Sounds like something you know nothing about. So why do you feel compelled to comment on it?

Rick C.

Ok. more non-expert thoughts.

The speed of sound is higer in He (probably that's just another way of repeating those claims) but anyway the speed of sound is hard limit with air guns, because a bullet moving faster than sound has a vacuum behind it and will not accelerate. Just to clarify, this is speed of sound in the chamber/barrel, and the speed of sound increaSses with temperature, which is how regular firearms manage to expel supersoniC projectiles...

If you make your hydrogen by reforming steam and natural gas, you do emit CO2.

You don't have to make your hydrogen that way, and even if you chose to, you could trap the CO2 rather than venting it atmosphere, but that does cost money.

What makes you think that? It always seems to make sense to size you primary power source to produce little more than the average power output required, and add a battery to cover peak demand. That's the idea behind hybrid cars too.