"Pancho" wrote in message
...
On 15/08/2019 14:38, Roger Hayter wrote:
Pancho wrote:

On 15/08/2019 13:15, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Its the same as a battery. You need primary energy to charge your
hydrogen tanks.

Probably by electrolysing water using grid electricity from coaal and
gat power staions.

No comment on the viability of Hydrogen fuel cells but surely
electrolysing water is something intermittent renewable sources are
suitable for, i.e. in the UK = wind.

The problem with that is having plant and employees lying idle when
there isn't any wind.


Yes, but the devil is in the detail. How much it costs to have a hydrogen
production operation lying idle. How much it costs to generate wind
electricity. How much it costs to integrate wind energy into the grid.

I don't know the economic answers. It just seems that, theoretically,
hydrogen production is a potential answer to the obvious problem of wind
variability.

Not when you still have to compress it and move it to where
you plan to use it.

If it does ever make sense to use hydrogen as a transport
fuel, and thats very unlikely, it makes a lot more sense to
use nukes to generate it directly and not via electrolysis.

And even that only makes sense because it is likely to be
much less polluting that making say methanol using nukes.

It is even possible that hydrogen production could be coupled with
hydrogen power generation to balance wind variability, with only the
surplus hydrogen going to power cars.

But again, not economically viable instead of nukes.

I don't know the answers but it is an interesting problem.

I'm also very dubious of the suitability of hydrogen as a fuel for cars
due to the problems TNP mention earlier, i.e. volume, leaks and maybe
explosion risk. .