Challenging the topic 😒 !!!? With whom "you" you take summaries from white and brown people, and then you raise your nose to the camera for all of us to see what in inside them , talking down. what do you really add to science invention or something ? N
Calling this thing anything other than an inefficient science experiment is disingenuous. The amount of power required to electrolyze any useful amount of hydrogen is massive (especially considering the output of a solar array). The tiny solar cell and limited efficiency of it means there is not a chance in hell this device creates enough hydrogen to usefully do ANYTHING productive. Fact: people have been making these since Radio shack was still around, hooking up their solar panels to a transformer then dipping electodes in water. This, isnt remotely a new invention nor is it anything that will ever be useful to adults. Children might learn something about physics from it, but this kind of tech wont be powering anything soon. Solar is already too inefficient, and electrolysis loses the vast majority of that energy just to break the atomic bonds and give you the hydrogen. the sad truth is if you wanted to drive an electric motor, you'd get more usable energy just hooking the solar cell straight to your battery pack than adding the step of electrolysis.
No matter how you store the H2, the danger for local storage at home is problematic regardless of the pressure since H2 is more explosive than natural gas. Even storing gasoline in a fuel can is generally not recommended let alone H2 in a compressed tank that is prone to H2 embrittlement. H2 is just a tough gas to use safely especially in a domestic household setting.
Long and short, this is what the world needs a hell of a lot more R&D on everything. And this is what I think this channel promotes the idea of being able to look at the pros and cons, subjectively and accurately and deeply. I love this channel. Scientific breakthroughs with the world needs.
It would be great to see heating in homes and factories using hydrogen. That alone bypasses the whole "40% fuel cell efficiency." And if you think about it, how much of that energy do we need as heat?
Everyone seems to just gloss over the dangers to Life and danger to Earth in destroying Water for energy... The system will create loss of water on Earth... That is insanely a horrible bad idea... unless they send out space probes to grab comets and slam them into the pacific ocean for a refill, all technology destroying water for energy should be banned.
Agree. if he had a 2nd person that was also talking in the videos, i could understand the frequent switching to focus on the talking person. For a single person, it is very distracting.
Yup Agreed. Focus on just one camera and you can use the second camera from a 45 degree angle, if you like, but don't look at it. But TBH there are so many different images added that interest is maintained and it is not necessary to use the second camera. Keep up the good work. Excellent videos otherwise!!! 😊
When comparing a fuel cell vehicle to a battery electric vehicle, please remember: fuel cells produce DC current just like a battery. So you will need an inverter for either of them, to power your home or your EV's AC induction motor (lightest, most efficient and most flexible type so commonly used in EVs). Most batteries can return 85 - 90% of the energy you put in. If you can get the hydrolyzer up to 71% efficiency, and the fuel cell up to a similar level of efficiency, you will get about ½ of your energy input back out (√½ ≈ 0.71). If they can get the hydrolyzer and the fuel cell, each, up to 90% efficiency, you'll get about 81% of your energy input back out again (0.9 × 0.9 = 0.81). That's getting competitive with a battery. 95% efficiency on each would make it fully competitive. Solhyd is claiming they can hit that with their hydrolyzer. But fuel cells ... not there. There are high-efficiency fuel cells but they use a lot of platinum, which makes them hideously expensive (figure about $250k for 25 kW output; 25 kW is about 33⅓ horsepower). There are cheaper ones, based on nickel, which are nowhere near their level of efficiency (~40%). 0.9 × 0.4 = 0.36 or 36% round-trip efficiency, which is still less than half of a battery. WRT storing hydrogen: there are carbon-wrapped tanks which can take 700 bar (over 10k psi) but you will need to expend a LOT of energy on the pumps to put it in there. And it will still take a larger volume, compared to gasoline. Metal hydrides typically only need about 500 psi (lower pumping losses) but fueling is exothermic and expelling the fuel is endothermic. Rodger Billings drove a hydrogen-fueled Cadillac in Jimmy Carter's inauguration parade, with the hydrogen stored in metal hydrides. The fuel tanks had tubes running through them; engine exhaust went through the tubes when the engine was running (providing heat for the endothermic release) and cool air was pumped through the tubes when fueling (providing cooling during the exothermic fueling). The big problem is that metal hydride powders are very heavy; you're lucky if 5% of your total stored mass is hydrogen. 1 kg of hydrogen has about the same energy content as 1 gallon of gasoline. That's 20 kg / 44 pounds of mass to carry the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline. Gasoline weighs about 6.5 pounds / gallon and you don't need a 500 psi-rated tank to hold it. You talk about a Solhyd panel making 250 liters of H₂ / day. I'm assuming you mean 250 liters at STP; you did mention it was low pressure. 1 kg of H₂ is about 12k liters at STP. You would need about 48 such panels to make the hydrogen energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline per day. If they can do that for 30 years ... the per-kg cost might be reasonable. Hydrogen makes sense in only 2 cases: 1 - You need to store the energy for weeks or months at a time. Batteries are good for a few days, maybe a week, but not for longer timespans. The Apollo capsules used hydrogen / oxygen fuel cells to carry energy for an 11-12 day mission, providing heat and potable water as byproducts. Battery tech of the time was nowhere close to that storage capacity and the byproducts were useful. Artemis will use a lot of solar panels and some batteries; they won't be hauling all of their energy when they blast off the pad. Apollo had no choice; solar tech wasn't ready, back then, either. 2 - You need to transfer the energy much faster. If you are refueling a vehicle and need to refuel in a handful of minutes, rather than having a hour, hydrogen makes some sense. An Over-The-Road semi can store liquid hydrogen (LH2) for 500 miles and you can refuel it in minutes. A battery-electric semi ... good luck getting the charging time for 500 miles down under an hour. A driver is going to want to spend as much of their time as possible in motion (they get paid by the mile, not by the hour) so many heavy-truck manufacturers are actively working on hydrogen fuel cell rigs, running on LH2. Ditto for electric airplanes. They're hoping that, if they build the demand, the supply / infrastructure will come. There are three "miracles" needed before we can transition to a hydrogen economy: the cost of production needs to come down, the cost of storage needs to come down and the cost of usage needs to come down. The Solhyd panel appears to be working on the first one. All three are making evolutionary gains but ... I think we're still decades away from a hydrogen economy being realistic.
Concerning semi-tractor trailer trucks…remember there are laws in the USA limiting the time a driver can spend behind the wheel. So recharging the batteries in under a hour is not an issue. After 6 hours of sleep the driver will awaken to a fully charged vehicle and be back on his or her route again.
I think battery charging time issues could be totally resolved by having a system of battery swap-outs. Each vehicle would have a yearly subscription to a battery swap-out service. The battery packs would be charged up by the swap-out service, and the driver would simply switch out battery packs. This could be done much faster than even standard fuel fill-ups! The swap-out service would not have to worry about their batteries being stolen any more than a gas station would worry about their barbecue propane tanks getting stolen. The customer would only have one battery pack at any moment anyways.
Thank you for such great data. I believe Bob Lazar was using Uranium Hydride in his corvette which had a greater range than stock all stored in three scuba tanks.
I think the reason why Hydro can be the winner in homes is your 1st point. With Hydrogen you can easily have a huge solar roof more than you need, and store the energy for the winter. You can do it locally/off grid. This is huge. And is very far off with Batteries.
Wrong wrong wrong…by the time hydrogen is anywhere near being competitive batteries+solar will be so much better and cheaper…is a reason 1.5million EVs were sold last month compared to 12 hydrogen cars! lol
It makes more sense to just store the electricity given how much it takes to create it and then use a fuel cell to get it back, IF it’s for an EV or home use. Only makes sense when there is huge over production that the batteries would be very large or expensive, or for uses like air travel where battery weight is a limiting factor
Yep that is what will be needed for seasonal storage. A large array that powers the house, charges the batteries to run the house and charge the vehicles at night, and provides seasonal storage for the higher latitude countries when there is plenty of sun in the summer. The H2 would be best stored as ammonia for use in the winter when solar is very weak or nonexistent for months at a time. A home would size their NH3 storage tanks based on how long and severe their winters are. Also with a freezing point of -70 C the tanks won't need very much insulation. Or they can just run their home off of RNG in the winter 😅. These also have the huge benefit of not using ground water to make H2 to preserve our fresh water resources.
It makes sense to develop for heavy freight industries like rail, but especially shipping - and also notably lightweight air transport too such as ultralight planes and drones. Having on-harbor production facilities to utilize wave, wind, and solar energy to not just power the grid, but to also use excess energy to directly produce store the energy as hydrogen, and then fuel cargo ships directly as they dock and load/unload. You also have a vast abundance of hydro right on location, and pretty much all freight harbors of the future will become energy hubs through direct grid link, as well as hydrogen production. There is already a multi-billion investment in Power-to-X in Nordic countries to become the main European supplier of green hydrogen in the coming decade, specifically utilizing these methods - even going as far as building a massive artificial island in the north sea with the exclusive purpose of creating this infrastructure at a multinational grid level.
s NOT the future. It is pushed by the elite because its function similarities to regular fossil fuel setups. Similar maintenance similar distribution and profits. The catch is that you need electricity to produce. You need to produce 50-55 kWh of electricity. to have 40 kWh hydrogen energy. Be careful with science that approach subjects with a preconception and then they impose it on the evidence.
One of the big benefits over straight batteries for hydrogen is refueling speed. For vehicles (trucks, trains, planes, maybe boats) the amount of electricity required to be transferred into the vehicle at refueling stops is too damn high to cost effectively charge in more ways than one. Commercial vehicle usage pattern exceeds the average consumer car travel time per day, and every minute waiting for charge up is a minute the commercial vehicle can’t be used for transport. Hydrogen can be green way to solve it, but so can flywheels, or other chemicals, or dedicated charging on the go hardware/tugs (think trolleys/buses that connect up to overhead electrified lines) for stretches of highways or whatever the byway is that serves the mode of transport. You don’t even need to go fully into one of the refuel strategies as the only way to store energy. You can put in modular refuel/generator to primarily a battery powered truck that allows for fast refuel and slowly recharges on the go perhaps. My favorite mix would be using batteries as flywheel weights. You spin up the weight at refueling stops, then slowly covert that to stored battery energy as traveling down the road/rail/air. Vibrating flywheels because of road bumps would kinda become a nightmare maintenance liability I suspect.
To drive 1 mile with a hydrogen fuel cell car, you need about 20 grammes of hydrogen. This costs at least 1 kWh to make. To store the generated hydrogen in the tank, costs another 20% energy, so that makes 1,2 kWh per mile. A solar panel with 400 Wp takes 3-4 hours to make this amount of energy around noon. On a full day the panel will be making about 2,5 kWh. Suppose you have 20 of these panels and it's sunny summer day. Then you can generate 50 kWh - which enough for 40 miles - for a big roof with 20 panels. Just barely 2 miles per panel, per sunny summer's day. Btw. a BEV will do with 1/5 th of the energy, much more feasible, and safe. When you would burn hydrogen in a combustion engine, you'll need 3 times more than for a fuel cell car. No way that you can provide your own hydrogen for that.
When your solar panels are producing excess it can be used to make green hydrogen for many uses. Heat your home, cooking and fueling a car or generator when the sun isn't shining. Hydrogen vehicles are EVs. These will be used at highway fueling stations along highways for refueling semi trucks that can not sit for hours waiting to be charged from solar or grid power.
@@solarcabin I don't understand how you can say batteries take up a lot of room. And who cares about weight when they are sitting in the garage? 50kWh worth of LiFepO4 batteries take about the same volume as a modest chest freezer. Not much at all, and they can be put anywhere.
Why? Direct solar electricity is much more efficient. The complexity of a fuel burning engine to produce motive energy is crazy compared to the simplicity of using electric traction motors with the significant added benefit of regen braking. This is crazy! I was in the business of transporting cryogenic gases, including hydrogen and I can assure you that dealing with hydrogen is much more complex and dangerous than conducting electrons from solar panels to batteries to motors. Electricity is easier, safer, and much more efficient.
KISS = keep it super simple. Solar panel directly charging car EV battery. Done. Could not be simpler or cheaper, and the technology is already here, installed in our garages.
Thanks for talking about this technology! But just as some others have commented: in your comparison you leave out the problem with the fuel cells, that they require a worse kind of mining than the battery materials, which by the way are shifting now already to a broader mix with less hard to produce elements like sodium, Sulphur, Iron... and as much as I liked the idea of Hydrogen in the past the more I learn about the problems with storage, round-trip efficiency the less I like it! And particularly not for home use! I don't want to live in a building, where you always have to fear it blows up, because some vibration or aging of material has let to a leak! This technology would be really useful to make fertilisers in countries that have a lot of sun! And of course make steel and concrete and all the other good stuff you can do with it, but not for space heating or transportation!
I may have this all wrong, but at 11:00 you show a house with 22 panels on it. Assuming 250l/panel per day, that would be creating a little less than 500g/day of hydrogen. Hardly 'industrial scale' and arguably, not enough to make this worthwhile at least for small scale operations. What am I missing?
I was a big fan of hydrogen fuel cells for cars and transportation. But the more I learned about it, the challenges just seem way to big for a national scale, especially with battery technology improving. Now, for trailers, shipping and planes, I would like to see hydrogen come through for them.
If you read the Tesla impact report, you'll see that shipping and aviation each account for 2-3% of the global CO2 footprint, it's LOT of infrastructure for surprisingly little reward.
@@rogerstarkey5390 I dissagree, Roger. Becasue it's not just for transportation. In fact, most hydrogen is used by industry and it's a way to decarbonize steel. It's a much bigger impact than just 2-3%
@@filonin2 it still seems like cars are at a standstill and how long would it take to create that hydrogen infrastructure? Meanwhile, a 1/4 mile from my house, there 8 or 10 Tesla chargers going in by my local grocery store. Seems a bit like VHS vs Beta to me or HDDVD vs BluRay now.
We just have to invest time, money and knowledge into this problem, it is far better than ev's. When a converter makes the energy and the hydrogen combines with the air, there is no pollution, when a 'tesla-like' vehicle is empty, charging on the net, takes more time than filling a hydrogen tank. Now I have also doubts about the recycling of EV's, which is not done yet, while a total H2 vehicle can be recycled totally. Of course, the storage etc is a problem now still, and the energy that comes from it is less, but it is so much around us, we just have to tackle that one tiny problem, only if every scientist and engineer that worked around the clock on EV's took 6 hours of their time to search and come up with ideas on how to make H2 more efficiently, then there were no scary stories around of people who have combustible fluids at home and the chance of it to explode. LPG tanks are here e very long time, hardly any accident happens and when H2 does escape, it makes no big bang, whereas LPG stays in it form very dangerous, think about that for a while. Just saying...
You mean EV: Solar to electro ready to use 85% . Solar to hydrogen (95%) Compression -20% (76%) To fool cell -? To BATTERY -40% reconversion (45%) Or fool cell to combustion -70% (23%) . At best about half the efficiency at much greater cost. . At worst 24% efficiency. IF the claims stack up. . But those against solar are quick to say "what if it's cloudy??" In that case, no hydrogen and not alternative energy. . KISS applies. More variables More points of failure. More cost.
Eh, for a hydrogen-based storage system to make sense, one has to have an application where it is ok to lose 50% of the energy put into it; generally home and ground transportation applications are not it, as more efficient tech is available for that at this time (batteries), etc. 🧐
@@RobC1999 Have you seen the weight of pressurized tanks in hydrogen fuel cell cars? The tank weighs much more than the hydrogen it contains. Plus all the onboard venting and filling equipment. Hydrogen becomes beneficial from an energy to weight basis only over a certain size of vehicle - e.g. big rigs and above. Unless some amazing new storage method comes along.
@@GantryG This makes sense for seasonal storage of renewable energy. The cost of storing hydrogen scales well with size - that's probably the only thing in hydrogen's favor.
The ideal would be a direct solar to hydrogen photosynthesis process. The problem is that it's only ideal if you only want to create hydrogen and not have a daytime power supply also.
@@symonchester Yes, it would be nice if they just cut the time wasting waffle out and got to the point, in the end I just get bored and hit the back button
Check out the hydrogen House in NJ. The problem with the new panels is the Hydrogen is at normal pressure. So you can't store it unless you get +350psi😢 if you use an electrolizer that has a built in comprsser. I live in N fort worth. Near alliance airport. I have to worry about the summers which gets about 105-110f 😢 so I will most likely need 3 or 4 40ft tanks, btw used propane tanks will work. BUT you need all the lines, valves, etc to be made from stainless steel. Your argument is kind of flawed. therefore the only thing you can do with it is to use a fuel cell! You Can't use it to cook with, or heat anything in your house! 😅 as Hydrogen doesn't have an oder, well you get the idea. I hope ~~Cris
Hi, at the moment I fuel our AGA cooker on natural gas from the mains here in the Uk - Hydrogen is the only possible alternative fuel for the future. I truly want someone to succeed in separating hydrogen from water or air - and soon please.
For your question, I'm more willing. Our family typically doesn't go on long road trips. I've started watching more vlogs on themeparks to help subside those wants and it actually helps... I see people in long lines and it turns me off. Also one of my family members is involved in the airlines, so we get free flights (non-rev). Will say that I'm on the waiting game though. I want to see more done in the hydrogen sector before I consider buying alike solar panels like the ones you discussed here in this video.
Sorry Ricki, H2 is just too hard to handle, density, even liquefied is too low, and by the time you've added sufficient safety and monitoring tech the costs are simply too high. However, in space, an elecctrolizer to remove water vapor from the atmosphere, return O2 to breathe, or store with the H2 for propellent. Combined with Sabotiere process to break down CO2, you now have an atmosphere scrubbing system, returning usable raw materials for further use.
The obvious use case is higher latitudes. If you don’t get any or very low output in the winter, it’s interesting to store in the summer in H2 and use heat and electricity in the winter!
If you could have a home car that would give a 400 mile range, that would meet most domestic needs, for a vehicle to go a longer distance, rent one, Problem solved! I we could have a motor vehicle that ran on hydrogen, especially if you could refuel it at home, what a game changer that would be. Operational costs would be minimal. Where, and when do we get one?
I have 89% humidity, we have it in abundance and yes I would get one immediately if I could afford one. My attic get to 150 F it would be mice to not run AC to cool the house down from the frying pan above my head.
You briefly mentioned ammonia. Ammonia is used extensively in farming. So maybe it could be used to produce “green ammonia” for farmers. Perhaps in collaboration with agrovoltaics?
The production of Ammonia from hydrogen and hydrogen from water is very straighforward, but costly. Do you want to give your farmers in your country the billions of Dollars/Euros every year they would need as incentives so they could buy the fertilizer made from solar and wind via Ammonia?
@@wolfgangpreier9160we could just pass on the bill of cleaning up the mess we are in to the farmers as they are partly to blame. Tho whole industry needs to change.
@@adus123 The farmers are to blame to try to survive under the pressure of Rewe, Unilever and many others? I don't think so. WE - yes WE CONSUMERS are to blame that we always buy the cheapest and most convenient products and not the most valuable and sustainable and healthy ones. There is no industry to change when not WE - YES WE CONSUMERS - change. And i don't see that one happening. Everybody is just much too lazy and complacent. Let the climate and mother nature show us all the errors of our ways.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 yes let mother nature kill us all the poor will go first then maybe the rich will start to think when they dont have anyone to do their crap for them. I did say partly to blame ie not fully to blame
One of these units connected to a low pressure storage system then the can can be used for cooking and home heating. This keeps it simple and cheap. As hydrogen burns hotter than natural gas, a lot less is required. Mixed with air, the BTUs produced could be the same as natural gas, therefore no need to change boilers or cooker tops.
One thing I did read was that burning hydrogen itself only generates water, but the high temperature of the flame makes the nitrogen and oxygen in the air react and form polluting NOx gases, so it's apparently not too safe for indoor use. But I guess it's the same with natural gas and butane, propane, etc. What do you think? Frankly, I'd love to have people over and brag about my new hydrogen cooktop. Can you image a dual or hybrid cooktop that has a burner in one side and a fuel cell that converts hydrogen to electricity and runs an induction cooktop on the other? I'd be the best of both worlds.
Or, now that I think of it, it would be better to just have a norma panel and an electrolyzer under the burner to generate the hydrogen in situ only when you need it. That way you won't need to store it 🙂
direct air electrolyzer is great technology that I don't really see making sense in a home setting but it would work wonders to store energy and stabilize the grid or just to create cheap hydrogen for industries like steel where there's still no alternative to fossil fuels
it doesn't make sense to also waste energy on condensing water out of the air unless you're somewhere like the top of a mountain or something. Any place with access to water or sea water could skip that step and save some energy.
My imagination is running wild! How about a car of the future with a solar hydrogen making processor on top. Unlimited mileage. Do you see anything like that in the future?
I started my hydrogen conversion Solar Panel almost 20 years ago an got flack from fosil feul suplyers .thermoelectric converters and micro stadged compressors with multy gas stayges {9 defferint gasses} and a lot of regelations . hydrogen and oxygin from my setup .
You could always rent a car for long trips. If you combine this with a hydrogen Fuel Cell and battery packs for the home. This could be the quickest way to 80-90% green energy.
Plasma Kinetics has a unique hydrogen storage technique that allows you to store hydrogen on a film. You don't have to compress hydrogen with this system so you cut out the major cost with normal hydrogen storage. There won't be one source of green energy, we will need batteries along with everything else.
In cold climates, like here in Norway, the efficiency by using hydrogen in a fuel cell is higher. We can use the waste heat for heating 1/2 of the year. Storing H2 for winter use could be interesting if the prices on fuel cells and storage goes down. Most norwegian homes are heated by heat pumps, so about 150-300kg H2 would meet demand for charging cars and running the house in the middle of the winter, 2-3 months. We pay most for electricity in the winter.
I have experiment with Hydrogen in the past! I built a generator just for my car, it was crude, but it did work! You got to get the computer to accept the hydrogen into the system, and you have to have a bigger alternator, like 240 amps. 140 amps to run the car and 100 amps to run the alternator, or run two alternators, which ever is best. I went from 26 mpg, to 53 mpg, of course I only did that one time about 10 years ago. I haven't done much sense. I gave up on it.
Why hydrogen? Biogas (renewable methane) is much easier to store. You can even make biogas at home and store it and use it as a drop in replacement instead of natural gas since both are methane. There so much "free energy" that isn't used in food waste.
I tried to find out more about this, "High Differential pressure water electrolysis," but came up short. Can you make video about that technology so that people like me whom haven't heard of the technology can learn more about?
Correction, current fuel cells are something like 70-80% efficient. The DoE's numbers are for the entire round trip efficiencies (Even bEVs are something like 60-70% efficient according to the same metrics). BEVs are still far better in my opinion (a 20% gap is massive especially when you consider it's closer to 80-90% efficient when you get the power directly from your own solar systems) but hydrogen isn't a "dead option." In addition, the weight aspect (there's currently something like a 8:1 ratio for storage of hydrogen) is kinda glossed over. That still makes it "better" weight to energy compared to a bEV, but it's not as simple as taking the raw weight of hydrogen. That being said, I doubt these panels will be "coming to your home." Fuel cells are kinda expensive enough where I'm pretty sure for the average home a 5-10kWh sodium ion power wall will be cheaper. This seems more likely to be used at scale in places where there's a lot of land and a lot of sunlight on an industrial scale. These would likely go to the consumer hydrogen market for bigger vehicles (long haul trucks, aeroplanes etc which need the energy density) rather than the consumer market which will do just fine with BEVs.
First, thank you for continuing to produce good videos about new hydrogen technology, and for exploring the potential for using hydrogen as an energy source in the future. Everybody else, for some reason, seems to want to just put it down and ignore it. You say that hydrogen is very energy dense, then you say it has very low energy density. Of course you mean that it has high mass energy density, but low volumetric energy density. You should use those more specific terms because people need to start understanding energy density in both ways, since both are important. Also, you give the mass energy density without the storage container included, but since it requires heavy storage tanks, you should point that out immediately and give the adjusted mass energy density, including storage tanks. And then you talk about the amount of energy required to produce hydrogen as if that’s a problem, but in fact, it is exactly that reason why it does indeed have a high mass energy density. Put a lot of energy in to it to get a lot of energy out, energy is conserved. We would like to have to put even more energy in to produce it. The important factor is the efficiency of producing it, and the efficiency of extracting the energy back out again. Compare that to the efficiency of charging a battery and the efficiency of draining a battery. And compare the total volume of batteries required to store enough energy to power 1 million homes for three weeks, to the volume of hydrogen storage tanks required for the same thing. And, of course, compare the cost of the two systems also. Your focus is on residential and automobile use of hydrogen. But it’s pretty clear that hydrogen will definitely be used for applications involving heavy machinery that uses a tremendous amount of power, such as large long-distance trucks, mining vehicles, trains, maybe airplanes, perhaps involved in various industrial processes, like steel manufacturing. To that end, this hydrogen panel may make a great deal of sense for producing the needed hydrogen using large hydrogen solar farms, rather than using grid electricity along with traditional electrolyzers. I’m wondering about residential small scale infrastructure. Why not share hydrogen collection and concentration facilities among an entire block or two of houses? It’s not unheard of to have such neighborhood infrastructure. I have a box down the street that contains stuff for my neighborhood’s fiber optic cable system. Also down the street is a large transformer that steps down electricity for use in the neighborhood. Up the street is a large water storage tank. Under the street is a large sewage collection system, and a friend has a sewage pump station down the street from him.
There are hydrogen stations all the way from California to Alaska. It's called the Hydrogen Highway, and we have stations here in Victoria, BC. So, you are not correct to claim there are only stations in California and Oregon.
Personally, I don't own an EV yet (hoping for a Tesla someday), but I'll say this: If I could generate the H2 at home and fill up my tank in a couple of minutes every other day... I would so much prefer the hydrogen car. Especially if it's a hydrogen combustion engine, I'm a sucker for the sound and feeling of revving up a car. Anyone else here agree???
@@jimgraham6722 Haha. Love it man. As I said, I haven’t ridden my first EV, so my POV isn’t too unbiased, LOL I’ll bet when I do I’ll be hooked. What was it like riding an EV for the first time. Do you remember?
Same also I was thinking of putting these panels in my shed in a few years maybe instead of a car think of just general heating if they came up with a hydrogen powered heating and air condition, this could be a game changer because during the summer I can produce enough hydrogen to potentially heat my house without gas. this would be better than using it for a car. Maybe I will be able to produce more than I need but I assume it’s one or the other. Either way it looks like I will either get an EV or hydrogen car in the future, but the idea of this goes far past transportation.
if you can further miniturize the thing to be able to be strapped to my car roof, all I gotta do is fill the device with water for roadtrips and literally just go to gas stations with water and air stations to fill up.
I would be impressed if they did anything other than electrolysis. When you start with a 20% efficient panel then you're already doing poorly. I'll admit that 95% efficient electrolysis is damned impressive. If hydrogen gets anywhere it will need some kind of catalyst that can use sunlight or heat.
Hiydrogen has high energy per unit weight, but a very low energy density by volume at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. So the only way to pack enough hydrogen in a vehicle to get a reasonable range means either extremely high pressures or ultracold temperatures, both of which use up more energy. Storing electricity via water electrolysis, compressiion for storage, and fuel cell has an overall efficiency of about 27%. Storing electricity via charger and batteries is 85% efficient. So, it needs 3x more solar panels, and with the cost of the electrolyzer and hydrogen storage, it will cost more than the equivalent grid tied solar system with battery storage.
It is amazing the pace of development Ricki by the time you have produced a video a new development has advanced. I love this Hoymiles concept. However there is another way to store hydrogen. Hamstrung by the US government it was not allowed patents till 2017 due to its disruptive nature. That company is Plasma Kinetics. Please review their process in a future video and how its storage method could mesh with low pressure in residence production. Thanks for all your efforts.
Yeah, and I see them driving around every day. It's awesome to see them dump hot water out the tail pipe. The Toyota Mirai has been out since 2014 and if you're in California they are everywhere, so your points are clearly moot. You just live in a rundown country.
*_Now_* who's cookin' with gas! Household hydrogen means we can use it for a gas stove, oven and BBQ as well as all your lawn mower, snow blower, and around town motor vehicle needs.
I believe H2 is more suited at grid level, coupled with long term storage to make up for low solar during winter months. At residential level solar + battery is sufficient and efficient. Also, you provided the advertize efficiency or lab result, real world should be slightly less. H2 leaks, corrode metal pipes. You can't change physics which is on the side of Li batteries.
It's a good point, but the future of fossil-fuel-free energy requires input from all technologies. I think it's iomportant that companies like these push researhc forward. If the people who invented the solar panel got dispirited because of the high cost and low efficiency of the first lab-level PV cells, we wouldn't have dirt cheap solar power today. The same goes for lithium batteries. If get the same level of research and development for H2, things could evolve faster and challenge batteries, because, as you say, you can't change the physics and the inherent limitation of batteries in terms of energy density. Wouldn't you agree?
@@Israel_Two_Bit Yes it might happen but improbable. The problem is h2 is a light gas, takes a lot of volume, very low liquidfying temperature, explosive, less efficient as fuel is always < batteries for most chemistry. The sheer number of breakthrough required in many fields makes it more unlikely than 3000 wh/kg LiS Solid State batteries.
I envision solar thermal energy and thermal batteries becoming a strong player towards solving the intermittency problem of renewable energy. A large insulated tank of sand would make a decent thermal battery for cheap. You could also use a phase change material to store more energy without a huge swing in temperature. A Stirling engine can convert a temperature difference to electricity (and also the reverse) but using heat for heating is more efficient. It might make sense to have a mix of PV panels and thermal solar panels and use both thermal and electric batteries combined with the Stirling engine for conversion. A computer program could intake all relevant information and manage the system in a smart way converting if and when it makes sense to do so. One example could be more heat becomes electricity in the summer months.
I have a question: can these panels collect and store the water itself rather than splitting off the H2 and O2? I'm convinced that solar is an answer for most things, tho rhere is plenty of room to improvement. If so, how much water can be collected from various humidities? Not ready to invest in H2 just yet. Very informative video, though,. Keep it up
One situation where the hydrogen panel might be better is for example a house with a well issue, or areas where water is a more valuable or protected resource.
5:57 question answer: no, because my bev can already charge at home on my current much cheaper solar system and a 4 min recharge at home is usless when I can already charge overnight with the exact same or less effort.
Thanks for your quality videos. Couple of things though : - hydrogen is no energy source, just as a battery is no energy source; both are just storage methods. - comparison is incomplete: the whole system should be considered, fuel cells require mining too, although a lot less I guess. - comparison should include complexity: solar => electricity => hydrogen => (compression =>) storage => fuel-cell => electricity, compared to solar => electriciy => storage (battery) => electricity - Complexity again but on car level: a hydrogen car is essentially a complete BEV with a very small battery + the hydrogen-tank / fuel-cell system on top of it => very complex I'm really not convinced hydrogen will ever really make sense in cars, or even if so, it's too late, BEVs have won. So the solution for these solar panels should rather focus on storage, mainly seasonal storage, but flow-batteries are probably the better solution for this use-case. And from a global energy production versus need perspective, in the context of the transition to clean energy, efficiency is top priority over comfort which in most cases range is. Range is mostly a psychological problem => the rational solution still is BEVs.
The way we currently produce hydrogen it is not an energy source. It is basically a storage device, storing the energy that we have put in to extracting hydrogen from other components.
Wonder if SolHyde has ever experimented with an on/off switch to disable/enable hydrogen production by these panels so as to eliminate the H2 storage issue. Then, say, you'd switch the panels to enable H2 prior to refueling your hydrogen vehicle, then switch them to disable H2 production after refueling is done.
Hydrogen is small & can get through normal seals. You really should dig into the details of the cooling, compression & storage issues in an up front way. Purity is the issue with a fuel cell membrane. Until there is a method to cycle a cleaning of the membrane, they have a very short life in the presence of minerals & other sediment.
I suggest you Watch Bob lazar explain how it's actually quite easy to store hydrogen and with the money put into one war, we'd easily have access to hydrogen storage.
I have a neighbor whose house burned down bc he was charging his Tesla and it overheated. Evidently those battery fires are insanely hot. Both his neighbors on either side also had serious damage. Evidently Lithum fires are more common than we are being told.
I'd love to see a fully integrated home power system that uses solar and wind to charge a battery and compress/store hydrogen, instead of cobbling it together between multiple systems. Would be good for going completely off grid, or moving toward a decentralized grid, and having multiple types of backup system.
Everyone considering hydrogen as a fuel source should do this first: 1. Do the plumbing for a "on-demand" water heater, including gas lines. (if you actually do this, do the work, then have it checked by a professional to see how well you did.) 2. Replace an oil seal on any internal combustion engine of your choice. These will give you a visceral understanding of the concept of making a good seal. Now consider that hydrogen gas causes embrittlement of metals (and subsequent failure) and that pipe junctions are extremely difficult to seal (for us average folk) This makes hydrogen a non-starter. Though some solar electronics can be complicated, they are sold as easily replaceable modules that anyone can learn how to do. Large profit incentives for battery technology will insure that batteries will become cheaper, safer and lighter over time.
Plasma Kinetics has a unique hydrogen storage technique that allows you to store hydrogen on a film. You don't have to compress hydrogen with this system so you cut out the major cost with normal hydrogen storage.
I looked at this from a technical standpoint - it is a lab party-trick, with very little practical use. Some people jump on the funding bandwagon with essentially nice-sounding but impractical ideas...
Almost every time I see someone calculate the cost of a system amortized over a long time span, they neglect the "opportunity cost" of the initial investment. If you spend, for example, $16,000 putting 20 of these panels on your roof, and expect to use then for 30 years, you should add to the cost over that lifetime the money the $16,000 could have earned if invested somewhere. It's not unreasonable to say the $16,000 could be invested somewhere that earned 6% per year. That's close to $1,000 per year in lost returns that you could have earned if you passed on installing the panels. To make the math simpler, let's call that $50/year per panel. Each panel makes 250 liters per day, they say. 91,250 liters per year. At standard atmospheric pressure and temperature, hydrogen gas is about 0.083 g/L. That works out to about 7.5 kg per panel per year. Divide the $800 cost of the panel by a 30 year life, and the cost per year is $27. Add the $50 in opportunity cost, and the total cost is $77/year. Hmmm. That means the hydrogen is actually costing 0ver $10 per kg. And that neglect the cost of the compressors and tanks that would be needed in a practical set up. The math doesn't work.
Being that it's pretty explosive, I vote for using most of the green hydrogen we can produce to power freight ships, locomotives and backup/peaker power plants. If there's enough left over then perhaps in homes.
1.: How do you propose to produce hydrogen? 2.: How do you propose to store the hydrogen? 3.: How do you propose to transport the hydrogen? 4.: How do you propose it should be converted in "freight ships, locomotives and backup/peaker power plants"? By burning it? Via fuel cells?
One kilogram of hydrogen in liquid phase is around 14 Liters, that is quite a bit of volume you need to store and will be used up by a catalyst stove in about a minute.
@@rob6850 it was pretty funny when he said that. And of course we know that something can always go wrong. But then again, it’s pretty much the same thing as piping natural gas to our houses which we already do.
@@ecoideazventures6417 Not sure what you’re referring to. Gas line explosions? Like the PGE one in the Bay Area or the one that happened in Guadalajara??
I could see this used in cases where natural gas burners are replaced with H² burners, resulting in minimal infrastructure change and clean burning, as curent gas tops for exemple are horrible with CO and carcinogenic compounds.
If you are putting solar on you roof, and planning to use the harvested solar energy to cook with, you are throwing away a very large portion of the solar power. It would be much more economical in the long run to replace the gas cooktop with an induction cooktop. That utilizes the solar power to directly heat the pan - no wasted energy going past the pots and pans in the form of hot water vapor from the combustion of hydrogen.
@@jimmurphy5355 yes. But replacing a hot water boiler is more expensive. You just run the gas to the burner. Also a gas turbine could cut cost and emission with a slightly more steady out put ( heat is also harvested) than direct solar with H² not needing to be stored at high pressure and a long time. Im saying it could be a plug and play in very specific scenario with direct use or cheap low pressure storage.
@@GeorgeBP81 The panels cost triple what a standard solar panel costs. For much less than the extra cost of the hydrogen panels, it would be possible to replace the boiler with a heat pump unit.
A good and balanced video and I think that the choice of energy storage should be on the use case rather than politics but that's not the world we live in. I'm not liking the twin-camera style you've been using in more recent videos. The disconcerting bit is when you turn from the camera while still delivering your lines and before transitioning to the other camera shot. Some of your transitions were cut so that you'd finished one sentence on the side camera then clean cut to the main camera and was much earlier viewing.
There are a couple ways to store hydrogen with a low pressure system and it can be used heating water or house just like natual gas or to run a generator. One is a container in a container filled with water and as it is filled one rises as the gas displaces the water. The first tank could be mostly burried in the ground. The other way is like a giant air matress, perhaps with its own building to protect it. For daily use they could be practical, but for long term, they would need to be huge.
We got those large buildings in our larger cities that produced city gas until about the 1980s when it was replaced by natural gas. They have all been refurbished and are now being used for public venues, malls etc. They are called Gasometer. Actually they had a primary use, constant gas pressure for the whole city. And no: You can not compress hydrogen in the way you think. That does not work. Sorry, it just does not work.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 Interesting. I don't know what you think I think about compressing hydrogen, but it can be compressed just like air can. Unlike air though, care must be given because it is flamable it needs to be treated more like natual gas or propane and because it is of small molecule size, it is able to go though smaller gaps in seals, defects in valves, etc.
Why would you take 4 times as much energy to heat water or your home with hydrogen when you can use 1/4 the electricity and use a heat pump? Also you need special containers to hold hydrogen since it is the smallest molecule in the universe it will embed itself in just about any material causing hydrogen embrittlement.
If it was a 60 to 75 kWh battery where are you can of course plug-in at any traditional charging station. And then made me have an additional tank for hydrogen that can maybe produce another 30 to 40 kWh worth of power now you’ve got something that’s compelling enough. Because even if you don’t have 100 and filling station should still be able to travel around 240 to 300 miles electric only with a sort of range extender, it would still be fine for a road trips and you could just use the hydrogen at home as a means to charge up
I have a question; all I have seen so far entail STORING hydrogen, but why bother with storage if you just generate it as needed and to fulfill demand. In other words a generate on demand system, and scale up or down the volume as required?
Solhyde panels are to solar panels with third party electrolyzers what a sealed beam headlight is to a headlamp with separate bulb, reflector, and lens. 🙂
Might be an interesting way to dehumidify indoor air and save money on air-conditioning in humid climates. A problem with moist air when cooled is that as it condenses it gives off lots of heat (latent heat of condensation) with each gram of water that's condensed, releasing that heat to the airconditioner coils forcing you to run your airconditioner more. If you reduce the amount of water in the air, you lower the temperaure at which it condenses and saves energy to cool your home. But it takes energy to turn it into hydrogen? Yes but apparently that's 95% efficent and the energy is stored chemically, not lost. Adittional to using it to run a car, one can use it with a fuel cell for backup power for their home. Antidotally, my central air conditioner condenses about 10 gallons of water a day during the hot days of summer. It would be phenomenal if that could be reduced in half, Turning the other 5 gallons of water into about 4.63 pounds of hydrogen and 37.06 pounds of oxygen. Maybe releasing some of oxygen into the home might improve the home's air quality or may benefit oxygen concentrators for those who need them.
Why not set up a home charging network, where you can sell your charger time when you're not using it? An AirBNB type hydrogen charging platform? Could also be done for electric. You'd put the charging station close to the curb or near end of your driveway. The network would show where charging is available.
I say Lavo system with direct electrolysis of the air like the panel..Neat there is a way we can make high pressure H2 through the electrolysis process...
Great explanation (as always), just one minor criticism about the video if I may, the continual switching back and forth between cameras was quite distracting.
i kinda also wanna be able to generate electricity from excess hydrogen made. maybe use it in a stove burner? IDK. the best part about having liquid hydrogen stored is that you can use it whenever. I seen people make hydrogen powered generators work just the same as gas ones.
If I could refuel at home, you can bet businesses would find a way to monetize the same tech and refueling stations would pop up. I dont like batteries so yes, i would switch over. Great video. You channel is awesome.
Check out Hoymiles for your Solar Micro-Inverters Today! geni.us/Inverters
Challenging the topic 😒 !!!?
With whom "you" you take summaries from white and brown people, and then you raise your nose to the camera for all of us to see what in inside them , talking down.
what do you really add to science invention or something ? N
Amen! Love your content, but adds a spectacle that is not necessary.
Would LOVE 💕 to hear more on hydrogen compression tech you spoke of. I've been looking for that for a long time now. Ty! Great vid!
Calling this thing anything other than an inefficient science experiment is disingenuous. The amount of power required to electrolyze any useful amount of hydrogen is massive (especially considering the output of a solar array). The tiny solar cell and limited efficiency of it means there is not a chance in hell this device creates enough hydrogen to usefully do ANYTHING productive.
Fact: people have been making these since Radio shack was still around, hooking up their solar panels to a transformer then dipping electodes in water. This, isnt remotely a new invention nor is it anything that will ever be useful to adults. Children might learn something about physics from it, but this kind of tech wont be powering anything soon.
Solar is already too inefficient, and electrolysis loses the vast majority of that energy just to break the atomic bonds and give you the hydrogen.
the sad truth is if you wanted to drive an electric motor, you'd get more usable energy just hooking the solar cell straight to your battery pack than adding the step of electrolysis.
No matter how you store the H2, the danger for local storage at home is problematic regardless of the pressure since H2 is more explosive than natural gas. Even storing gasoline in a fuel can is generally not recommended let alone H2 in a compressed tank that is prone to H2 embrittlement. H2 is just a tough gas to use safely especially in a domestic household setting.
Long and short, this is what the world needs a hell of a lot more R&D on everything. And this is what I think this channel promotes the idea of being able to look at the pros and cons, subjectively and accurately and deeply. I love this channel. Scientific breakthroughs with the world needs.
It would be great to see heating in homes and factories using hydrogen. That alone bypasses the whole "40% fuel cell efficiency." And if you think about it, how much of that energy do we need as heat?
Everyone seems to just gloss over the dangers to Life and danger to Earth in destroying Water for energy... The system will create loss of water on Earth... That is insanely a horrible bad idea... unless they send out space probes to grab comets and slam them into the pacific ocean for a refill, all technology destroying water for energy should be banned.
You swivel between two cameras so much in your videos now. It's kinda distracting.
Agree.
if he had a 2nd person that was also talking in the videos, i could understand the frequent switching to focus on the talking person. For a single person, it is very distracting.
Yup Agreed. Focus on just one camera and you can use the second camera from a 45 degree angle, if you like, but don't look at it. But TBH there are so many different images added that interest is maintained and it is not necessary to use the second camera. Keep up the good work. Excellent videos otherwise!!! 😊
Agree. Very cheesy.
@@henrybailey6111😢
I agree, the swivelling is distracting me from what is great informative content
When comparing a fuel cell vehicle to a battery electric vehicle, please remember: fuel cells produce DC current just like a battery. So you will need an inverter for either of them, to power your home or your EV's AC induction motor (lightest, most efficient and most flexible type so commonly used in EVs).
Most batteries can return 85 - 90% of the energy you put in. If you can get the hydrolyzer up to 71% efficiency, and the fuel cell up to a similar level of efficiency, you will get about ½ of your energy input back out (√½ ≈ 0.71). If they can get the hydrolyzer and the fuel cell, each, up to 90% efficiency, you'll get about 81% of your energy input back out again (0.9 × 0.9 = 0.81). That's getting competitive with a battery. 95% efficiency on each would make it fully competitive.
Solhyd is claiming they can hit that with their hydrolyzer. But fuel cells ... not there. There are high-efficiency fuel cells but they use a lot of platinum, which makes them hideously expensive (figure about $250k for 25 kW output; 25 kW is about 33⅓ horsepower). There are cheaper ones, based on nickel, which are nowhere near their level of efficiency (~40%). 0.9 × 0.4 = 0.36 or 36% round-trip efficiency, which is still less than half of a battery.
WRT storing hydrogen: there are carbon-wrapped tanks which can take 700 bar (over 10k psi) but you will need to expend a LOT of energy on the pumps to put it in there. And it will still take a larger volume, compared to gasoline.
Metal hydrides typically only need about 500 psi (lower pumping losses) but fueling is exothermic and expelling the fuel is endothermic. Rodger Billings drove a hydrogen-fueled Cadillac in Jimmy Carter's inauguration parade, with the hydrogen stored in metal hydrides. The fuel tanks had tubes running through them; engine exhaust went through the tubes when the engine was running (providing heat for the endothermic release) and cool air was pumped through the tubes when fueling (providing cooling during the exothermic fueling). The big problem is that metal hydride powders are very heavy; you're lucky if 5% of your total stored mass is hydrogen.
1 kg of hydrogen has about the same energy content as 1 gallon of gasoline. That's 20 kg / 44 pounds of mass to carry the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline. Gasoline weighs about 6.5 pounds / gallon and you don't need a 500 psi-rated tank to hold it.
You talk about a Solhyd panel making 250 liters of H₂ / day. I'm assuming you mean 250 liters at STP; you did mention it was low pressure. 1 kg of H₂ is about 12k liters at STP. You would need about 48 such panels to make the hydrogen energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline per day. If they can do that for 30 years ... the per-kg cost might be reasonable.
Hydrogen makes sense in only 2 cases:
1 - You need to store the energy for weeks or months at a time. Batteries are good for a few days, maybe a week, but not for longer timespans. The Apollo capsules used hydrogen / oxygen fuel cells to carry energy for an 11-12 day mission, providing heat and potable water as byproducts. Battery tech of the time was nowhere close to that storage capacity and the byproducts were useful. Artemis will use a lot of solar panels and some batteries; they won't be hauling all of their energy when they blast off the pad. Apollo had no choice; solar tech wasn't ready, back then, either.
2 - You need to transfer the energy much faster. If you are refueling a vehicle and need to refuel in a handful of minutes, rather than having a hour, hydrogen makes some sense. An Over-The-Road semi can store liquid hydrogen (LH2) for 500 miles and you can refuel it in minutes. A battery-electric semi ... good luck getting the charging time for 500 miles down under an hour. A driver is going to want to spend as much of their time as possible in motion (they get paid by the mile, not by the hour) so many heavy-truck manufacturers are actively working on hydrogen fuel cell rigs, running on LH2. Ditto for electric airplanes. They're hoping that, if they build the demand, the supply / infrastructure will come.
There are three "miracles" needed before we can transition to a hydrogen economy: the cost of production needs to come down, the cost of storage needs to come down and the cost of usage needs to come down. The Solhyd panel appears to be working on the first one. All three are making evolutionary gains but ... I think we're still decades away from a hydrogen economy being realistic.
Concerning semi-tractor trailer trucks…remember there are laws in the USA limiting the time a driver can spend behind the wheel. So recharging the batteries in under a hour is not an issue. After 6 hours of sleep the driver will awaken to a fully charged vehicle and be back on his or her route again.
I think battery charging time issues could be totally resolved by having a system of battery swap-outs. Each vehicle would have a yearly subscription to a battery swap-out service. The battery packs would be charged up by the swap-out service, and the driver would simply switch out battery packs. This could be done much faster than even standard fuel fill-ups! The swap-out service would not have to worry about their batteries being stolen any more than a gas station would worry about their barbecue propane tanks getting stolen. The customer would only have one battery pack at any moment anyways.
Thank you for such great data. I believe Bob Lazar was using Uranium Hydride in his corvette which had a greater range than stock all stored in three scuba tanks.
I think the reason why Hydro can be the winner in homes is your 1st point. With Hydrogen you can easily have a huge solar roof more than you need, and store the energy for the winter. You can do it locally/off grid. This is huge. And is very far off with Batteries.
Wrong wrong wrong…by the time hydrogen is anywhere near being competitive batteries+solar will be so much better and cheaper…is a reason 1.5million EVs were sold last month compared to 12 hydrogen cars! lol
It makes more sense to just store the electricity given how much it takes to create it and then use a fuel cell to get it back, IF it’s for an EV or home use.
Only makes sense when there is huge over production that the batteries would be very large or expensive, or for uses like air travel where battery weight is a limiting factor
Yep that is what will be needed for seasonal storage. A large array that powers the house, charges the batteries to run the house and charge the vehicles at night, and provides seasonal storage for the higher latitude countries when there is plenty of sun in the summer. The H2 would be best stored as ammonia for use in the winter when solar is very weak or nonexistent for months at a time. A home would size their NH3 storage tanks based on how long and severe their winters are. Also with a freezing point of -70 C the tanks won't need very much insulation. Or they can just run their home off of RNG in the winter 😅. These also have the huge benefit of not using ground water to make H2 to preserve our fresh water resources.
It makes sense to develop for heavy freight industries like rail, but especially shipping - and also notably lightweight air transport too such as ultralight planes and drones. Having on-harbor production facilities to utilize wave, wind, and solar energy to not just power the grid, but to also use excess energy to directly produce store the energy as hydrogen, and then fuel cargo ships directly as they dock and load/unload. You also have a vast abundance of hydro right on location, and pretty much all freight harbors of the future will become energy hubs through direct grid link, as well as hydrogen production.
There is already a multi-billion investment in Power-to-X in Nordic countries to become the main European supplier of green hydrogen in the coming decade, specifically utilizing these methods - even going as far as building a massive artificial island in the north sea with the exclusive purpose of creating this infrastructure at a multinational grid level.
s NOT the future. It is pushed by the elite because its function similarities to regular fossil fuel setups. Similar maintenance similar distribution and profits. The catch is that you need electricity to produce. You need to produce 50-55 kWh of electricity. to have 40 kWh hydrogen energy. Be careful with science that approach subjects with a preconception and then they impose it on the evidence.
One of the big benefits over straight batteries for hydrogen is refueling speed. For vehicles (trucks, trains, planes, maybe boats) the amount of electricity required to be transferred into the vehicle at refueling stops is too damn high to cost effectively charge in more ways than one. Commercial vehicle usage pattern exceeds the average consumer car travel time per day, and every minute waiting for charge up is a minute the commercial vehicle can’t be used for transport.
Hydrogen can be green way to solve it, but so can flywheels, or other chemicals, or dedicated charging on the go hardware/tugs (think trolleys/buses that connect up to overhead electrified lines) for stretches of highways or whatever the byway is that serves the mode of transport.
You don’t even need to go fully into one of the refuel strategies as the only way to store energy. You can put in modular refuel/generator to primarily a battery powered truck that allows for fast refuel and slowly recharges on the go perhaps.
My favorite mix would be using batteries as flywheel weights. You spin up the weight at refueling stops, then slowly covert that to stored battery energy as traveling down the road/rail/air. Vibrating flywheels because of road bumps would kinda become a nightmare maintenance liability I suspect.
To drive 1 mile with a hydrogen fuel cell car, you need about 20 grammes of hydrogen. This costs at least 1 kWh to make. To store the generated hydrogen in the tank, costs another 20% energy, so that makes 1,2 kWh per mile. A solar panel with 400 Wp takes 3-4 hours to make this amount of energy around noon. On a full day the panel will be making about 2,5 kWh. Suppose you have 20 of these panels and it's sunny summer day. Then you can generate 50 kWh - which enough for 40 miles - for a big roof with 20 panels. Just barely 2 miles per panel, per sunny summer's day. Btw. a BEV will do with 1/5 th of the energy, much more feasible, and safe. When you would burn hydrogen in a combustion engine, you'll need 3 times more than for a fuel cell car. No way that you can provide your own hydrogen for that.
When your solar panels are producing excess it can be used to make green hydrogen for many uses. Heat your home, cooking and fueling a car or generator when the sun isn't shining.
Hydrogen vehicles are EVs. These will be used at highway fueling stations along highways for refueling semi trucks that can not sit for hours waiting to be charged from solar or grid power.
And! Hydrogen is a greenhouse gas that will warm the world just like co2 would do
@@solarcabin or you just store in batteries
@@waywardgeologist2520 I live off grid with solar and batteries every day. Batteries weigh a lot and take up lots of room.
@@solarcabin I don't understand how you can say batteries take up a lot of room. And who cares about weight when they are sitting in the garage? 50kWh worth of LiFepO4 batteries take about the same volume as a modest chest freezer. Not much at all, and they can be put anywhere.
Why? Direct solar electricity is much more efficient. The complexity of a fuel burning engine to produce motive energy is crazy compared to the simplicity of using electric traction motors with the significant added benefit of regen braking. This is crazy! I was in the business of transporting cryogenic gases, including hydrogen and I can assure you that dealing with hydrogen is much more complex and dangerous than conducting electrons from solar panels to batteries to motors. Electricity is easier, safer, and much more efficient.
KISS = keep it super simple. Solar panel directly charging car EV battery. Done. Could not be simpler or cheaper, and the technology is already here, installed in our garages.
Thanks for talking about this technology! But just as some others have commented: in your comparison you leave out the problem with the fuel cells, that they require a worse kind of mining than the battery materials, which by the way are shifting now already to a broader mix with less hard to produce elements like sodium, Sulphur, Iron... and as much as I liked the idea of Hydrogen in the past the more I learn about the problems with storage, round-trip efficiency the less I like it! And particularly not for home use! I don't want to live in a building, where you always have to fear it blows up, because some vibration or aging of material has let to a leak!
This technology would be really useful to make fertilisers in countries that have a lot of sun! And of course make steel and concrete and all the other good stuff you can do with it, but not for space heating or transportation!
I may have this all wrong, but at 11:00 you show a house with 22 panels on it. Assuming 250l/panel per day, that would be creating a little less than 500g/day of hydrogen. Hardly 'industrial scale' and arguably, not enough to make this worthwhile at least for small scale operations. What am I missing?
I was a big fan of hydrogen fuel cells for cars and transportation. But the more I learned about it, the challenges just seem way to big for a national scale, especially with battery technology improving. Now, for trailers, shipping and planes, I would like to see hydrogen come through for them.
If you read the Tesla impact report, you'll see that shipping and aviation each account for 2-3% of the global CO2 footprint, it's LOT of infrastructure for surprisingly little reward.
@@rogerstarkey5390 I dissagree, Roger. Becasue it's not just for transportation. In fact, most hydrogen is used by industry and it's a way to decarbonize steel. It's a much bigger impact than just 2-3%
I see hydrogen powered cars driving around literally every day but I'm in California.
@@filonin2 it still seems like cars are at a standstill and how long would it take to create that hydrogen infrastructure? Meanwhile, a 1/4 mile from my house, there 8 or 10 Tesla chargers going in by my local grocery store. Seems a bit like VHS vs Beta to me or HDDVD vs BluRay now.
We just have to invest time, money and knowledge into this problem, it is far better than ev's. When a converter makes the energy and the hydrogen combines with the air, there is no pollution, when a 'tesla-like' vehicle is empty, charging on the net, takes more time than filling a hydrogen tank.
Now I have also doubts about the recycling of EV's, which is not done yet, while a total H2 vehicle can be recycled totally. Of course, the storage etc is a problem now still, and the energy that comes from it is less, but it is so much around us, we just have to tackle that one tiny problem, only if every scientist and engineer that worked around the clock on EV's took 6 hours of their time to search and come up with ideas on how to make H2 more efficiently, then there were no scary stories around of people who have combustible fluids at home and the chance of it to explode. LPG tanks are here e very long time, hardly any accident happens and when H2 does escape, it makes no big bang, whereas LPG stays in it form very dangerous, think about that for a while. Just saying...
Amazing video bro.. i love your vids
EV : Solar to electric ready to use.
Hydrogen Solar : Solar to electric to hydrogen to fuel cell
TBDV : GENIUS!!
You mean
EV: Solar to electro ready to use 85%
.
Solar to hydrogen (95%)
Compression -20% (76%)
To fool cell -?
To BATTERY -40% reconversion (45%)
Or fool cell to combustion -70% (23%)
.
At best about half the efficiency at much greater cost.
.
At worst 24% efficiency.
IF the claims stack up.
.
But those against solar are quick to say "what if it's cloudy??"
In that case, no hydrogen and not alternative energy.
.
KISS applies.
More variables
More points of failure.
More cost.
Eh, for a hydrogen-based storage system to make sense, one has to have an application where it is ok to lose 50% of the energy put into it; generally home and ground transportation applications are not it, as more efficient tech is available for that at this time (batteries), etc. 🧐
@@RobC1999 Have you seen the weight of pressurized tanks in hydrogen fuel cell cars? The tank weighs much more than the hydrogen it contains. Plus all the onboard venting and filling equipment. Hydrogen becomes beneficial from an energy to weight basis only over a certain size of vehicle - e.g. big rigs and above. Unless some amazing new storage method comes along.
@@GantryG This makes sense for seasonal storage of renewable energy. The cost of storing hydrogen scales well with size - that's probably the only thing in hydrogen's favor.
The ideal would be a direct solar to hydrogen photosynthesis process.
The problem is that it's only ideal if you only want to create hydrogen and not have a daytime power supply also.
I don't like the moving between two camera shots it's unnecessary and annoying
I agree... Also the 'more on that later' TH-camrs seem to be big on to keep you watching
@@symonchester Yes, it would be nice if they just cut the time wasting waffle out and got to the point, in the end I just get bored and hit the back button
Totally agree
Check out the hydrogen House in NJ. The problem with the new panels is the Hydrogen is at normal pressure. So you can't store it unless you get +350psi😢 if you use an electrolizer that has a built in comprsser. I live in N fort worth. Near alliance airport. I have to worry about the summers which gets about 105-110f 😢 so I will most likely need 3 or 4 40ft tanks, btw used propane tanks will work. BUT you need all the lines, valves, etc to be made from stainless steel. Your argument is kind of flawed. therefore the only thing you can do with it is to use a fuel cell! You Can't use it to cook with, or heat anything in your house! 😅 as Hydrogen doesn't have an oder, well you get the idea. I hope ~~Cris
Hi, at the moment I fuel our AGA cooker on natural gas from the mains here in the Uk - Hydrogen is the only possible alternative fuel for the future. I truly want someone to succeed in separating hydrogen from water or air - and soon please.
If hydrogen is produced in the home, it can be used in a gas boiler to heat hot water and space heat at 90%b plus efficiencies.
For your question, I'm more willing. Our family typically doesn't go on long road trips. I've started watching more vlogs on themeparks to help subside those wants and it actually helps... I see people in long lines and it turns me off. Also one of my family members is involved in the airlines, so we get free flights (non-rev).
Will say that I'm on the waiting game though. I want to see more done in the hydrogen sector before I consider buying alike solar panels like the ones you discussed here in this video.
Sorry Ricki, H2 is just too hard to handle, density, even liquefied is too low, and by the time you've added sufficient safety and monitoring tech the costs are simply too high.
However, in space, an elecctrolizer to remove water vapor from the atmosphere, return O2 to breathe, or store with the H2 for propellent. Combined with Sabotiere process to break down CO2, you now have an atmosphere scrubbing system, returning usable raw materials for further use.
Use it for heating and cooking food.
What about the recycling of Solar Panels and Batteries? That cost also needs to be factored in, especially in the long run...
The obvious use case is higher latitudes. If you don’t get any or very low output in the winter, it’s interesting to store in the summer in H2 and use heat and electricity in the winter!
How about integrating these hydrogen panels into the roof of your car? No refueling, charge as you go down the road. At least in the day time.
Using home generation of H2 immediately suggests space heating and hot water applications.
Better off using solar to power a geothermal in ground heat pump system.
Wow! That sounds so safe. Not combustible at all in your or your neighbors house.
If you could have a home car that would give a 400 mile range, that would meet most domestic needs, for a vehicle to go a longer distance, rent one, Problem solved!
I we could have a motor vehicle that ran on hydrogen, especially if you could refuel it at home, what a game changer that would be. Operational costs would be minimal.
Where, and when do we get one?
Im glad they finalky got their website working again.
My answer to your question, "Would I use..." That is a huge YES!!!
Why couldn't we add electrolyzers to vehicles powered by the regenerative braking?
I have 89% humidity, we have it in abundance and yes I would get one immediately if I could afford one. My attic get to 150 F it would be mice to not run AC to cool the house down from the frying pan above my head.
You briefly mentioned ammonia. Ammonia is used extensively in farming. So maybe it could be used to produce “green ammonia” for farmers. Perhaps in collaboration with agrovoltaics?
The production of Ammonia from hydrogen and hydrogen from water is very straighforward, but costly. Do you want to give your farmers in your country the billions of Dollars/Euros every year they would need as incentives so they could buy the fertilizer made from solar and wind via Ammonia?
@@wolfgangpreier9160we could just pass on the bill of cleaning up the mess we are in to the farmers as they are partly to blame. Tho whole industry needs to change.
@@adus123 The farmers are to blame to try to survive under the pressure of Rewe, Unilever and many others? I don't think so.
WE - yes WE CONSUMERS are to blame that we always buy the cheapest and most convenient products and not the most valuable and sustainable and healthy ones.
There is no industry to change when not WE - YES WE CONSUMERS - change. And i don't see that one happening. Everybody is just much too lazy and complacent.
Let the climate and mother nature show us all the errors of our ways.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 yes let mother nature kill us all the poor will go first then maybe the rich will start to think when they dont have anyone to do their crap for them. I did say partly to blame ie not fully to blame
One of these units connected to a low pressure storage system then the can can be used for cooking and home heating. This keeps it simple and cheap. As hydrogen burns hotter than natural gas, a lot less is required. Mixed with air, the BTUs produced could be the same as natural gas, therefore no need to change boilers or cooker tops.
One thing I did read was that burning hydrogen itself only generates water, but the high temperature of the flame makes the nitrogen and oxygen in the air react and form polluting NOx gases, so it's apparently not too safe for indoor use. But I guess it's the same with natural gas and butane, propane, etc. What do you think?
Frankly, I'd love to have people over and brag about my new hydrogen cooktop. Can you image a dual or hybrid cooktop that has a burner in one side and a fuel cell that converts hydrogen to electricity and runs an induction cooktop on the other? I'd be the best of both worlds.
Or, now that I think of it, it would be better to just have a norma panel and an electrolyzer under the burner to generate the hydrogen in situ only when you need it. That way you won't need to store it 🙂
direct air electrolyzer is great technology that I don't really see making sense in a home setting but it would work wonders to store energy and stabilize the grid or just to create cheap hydrogen for industries like steel where there's still no alternative to fossil fuels
Do you know how much such electrolyzers cost and how much maintenance they require and how much energy they need and which type of energy?
it doesn't make sense to also waste energy on condensing water out of the air unless you're somewhere like the top of a mountain or something. Any place with access to water or sea water could skip that step and save some energy.
@@xiaokaThis technology apparently doesn't condense the water first. It splits the water vapor itself. Which is really cool!
Oh. Looks like you are now talking about those very issues. Very nice.
SoCalGas has a hydrogen home in Downey, CA. First of it's kind in the U.S.
My imagination is running wild! How about a car of the future with a solar hydrogen making processor on top. Unlimited mileage. Do you see anything like that in the future?
I started my hydrogen conversion Solar Panel almost 20 years ago an got flack from fosil feul suplyers .thermoelectric converters and micro stadged compressors with multy gas stayges {9 defferint gasses} and a lot of regelations . hydrogen and oxygin from my setup .
You could always rent a car for long trips. If you combine this with a hydrogen Fuel Cell and battery packs for the home. This could be the quickest way to 80-90% green energy.
Plasma Kinetics has a unique hydrogen storage technique that allows you to store hydrogen on a film. You don't have to compress hydrogen with this system so you cut out the major cost with normal hydrogen storage. There won't be one source of green energy, we will need batteries along with everything else.
could you use a sharing app so users could sell each other hydrogen from their homes? Availability sounds like a big problem.
Imagine the savings!! Financial and environmental.
In cold climates, like here in Norway, the efficiency by using hydrogen in a fuel cell is higher. We can use the waste heat for heating 1/2 of the year. Storing H2 for winter use could be interesting if the prices on fuel cells and storage goes down. Most norwegian homes are heated by heat pumps, so about 150-300kg H2 would meet demand for charging cars and running the house in the middle of the winter, 2-3 months. We pay most for electricity in the winter.
I have experiment with Hydrogen in the past! I built a generator just for my car, it was crude, but it did work! You got to get the computer to accept the hydrogen into the system, and you have to have a bigger alternator, like 240 amps. 140 amps to run the car and 100 amps to run the alternator, or run two alternators, which ever is best. I went from 26 mpg, to 53 mpg, of course I only did that one time about 10 years ago. I haven't done much sense. I gave up on it.
Sunhydrogen is another promising company
Why hydrogen? Biogas (renewable methane) is much easier to store. You can even make biogas at home and store it and use it as a drop in replacement instead of natural gas since both are methane. There so much "free energy" that isn't used in food waste.
I tried to find out more about this, "High Differential pressure water electrolysis," but came up short. Can you make video about that technology so that people like me whom haven't heard of the technology can learn more about?
Correction, current fuel cells are something like 70-80% efficient. The DoE's numbers are for the entire round trip efficiencies (Even bEVs are something like 60-70% efficient according to the same metrics). BEVs are still far better in my opinion (a 20% gap is massive especially when you consider it's closer to 80-90% efficient when you get the power directly from your own solar systems) but hydrogen isn't a "dead option." In addition, the weight aspect (there's currently something like a 8:1 ratio for storage of hydrogen) is kinda glossed over. That still makes it "better" weight to energy compared to a bEV, but it's not as simple as taking the raw weight of hydrogen. That being said, I doubt these panels will be "coming to your home." Fuel cells are kinda expensive enough where I'm pretty sure for the average home a 5-10kWh sodium ion power wall will be cheaper. This seems more likely to be used at scale in places where there's a lot of land and a lot of sunlight on an industrial scale. These would likely go to the consumer hydrogen market for bigger vehicles (long haul trucks, aeroplanes etc which need the energy density) rather than the consumer market which will do just fine with BEVs.
Peru rings a bell. And Australia
🧂
this is very neat I wonder if this same idea could be applied to solar panels in space to harvest 3he
Need air as a source of water (as a source for H2)
That 50% efficiency will only increase over time as the technology grows.
No, the physical limitations are almost reached.
Hydrogen is a direct path to store from solar, wind, hydro and any other form of electric energy.
First, thank you for continuing to produce good videos about new hydrogen technology, and for exploring the potential for using hydrogen as an energy source in the future. Everybody else, for some reason, seems to want to just put it down and ignore it.
You say that hydrogen is very energy dense, then you say it has very low energy density. Of course you mean that it has high mass energy density, but low volumetric energy density. You should use those more specific terms because people need to start understanding energy density in both ways, since both are important. Also, you give the mass energy density without the storage container included, but since it requires heavy storage tanks, you should point that out immediately and give the adjusted mass energy density, including storage tanks. And then you talk about the amount of energy required to produce hydrogen as if that’s a problem, but in fact, it is exactly that reason why it does indeed have a high mass energy density. Put a lot of energy in to it to get a lot of energy out, energy is conserved. We would like to have to put even more energy in to produce it. The important factor is the efficiency of producing it, and the efficiency of extracting the energy back out again. Compare that to the efficiency of charging a battery and the efficiency of draining a battery. And compare the total volume of batteries required to store enough energy to power 1 million homes for three weeks, to the volume of hydrogen storage tanks required for the same thing. And, of course, compare the cost of the two systems also.
Your focus is on residential and automobile use of hydrogen. But it’s pretty clear that hydrogen will definitely be used for applications involving heavy machinery that uses a tremendous amount of power, such as large long-distance trucks, mining vehicles, trains, maybe airplanes, perhaps involved in various industrial processes, like steel manufacturing. To that end, this hydrogen panel may make a great deal of sense for producing the needed hydrogen using large hydrogen solar farms, rather than using grid electricity along with traditional electrolyzers.
I’m wondering about residential small scale infrastructure. Why not share hydrogen collection and concentration facilities among an entire block or two of houses? It’s not unheard of to have such neighborhood infrastructure. I have a box down the street that contains stuff for my neighborhood’s fiber optic cable system. Also down the street is a large transformer that steps down electricity for use in the neighborhood. Up the street is a large water storage tank. Under the street is a large sewage collection system, and a friend has a sewage pump station down the street from him.
There are hydrogen stations all the way from California to Alaska. It's called the Hydrogen Highway, and we have stations here in Victoria, BC. So, you are not correct to claim there are only stations in California and Oregon.
there are 40 in the US...
My wife and I would do that in a second. Hydrogen car filled at home would work perfectly for us, no problem.
that's good feedback... is production at home the key?
Performance in freezing weather = ?
Personally, I don't own an EV yet (hoping for a Tesla someday), but I'll say this: If I could generate the H2 at home and fill up my tank in a couple of minutes every other day... I would so much prefer the hydrogen car. Especially if it's a hydrogen combustion engine, I'm a sucker for the sound and feeling of revving up a car. Anyone else here agree???
@@jimgraham6722 Haha. Love it man. As I said, I haven’t ridden my first EV, so my POV isn’t too unbiased, LOL I’ll bet when I do I’ll be hooked. What was it like riding an EV for the first time. Do you remember?
Not really. I'll stick with my BEV. My house is too close to the freeway. The quicker we get rid of vehicle noise pollution, the better.
@@ipp_tutor Front rank at the stop light, when it turned green >>>>>
Same also I was thinking of putting these panels in my shed in a few years maybe instead of a car think of just general heating if they came up with a hydrogen powered heating and air condition, this could be a game changer because during the summer I can produce enough hydrogen to potentially heat my house without gas. this would be better than using it for a car. Maybe I will be able to produce more than I need but I assume it’s one or the other. Either way it looks like I will either get an EV or hydrogen car in the future, but the idea of this goes far past transportation.
@IPP_Tutor
No
if you can further miniturize the thing to be able to be strapped to my car roof, all I gotta do is fill the device with water for roadtrips and literally just go to gas stations with water and air stations to fill up.
I would be impressed if they did anything other than electrolysis. When you start with a 20% efficient panel then you're already doing poorly. I'll admit that 95% efficient electrolysis is damned impressive. If hydrogen gets anywhere it will need some kind of catalyst that can use sunlight or heat.
Japan is going for it with a high-temp reactor, that will power some iodine-hydrogen chemical redox reactions.
Hiydrogen has high energy per unit weight, but a very low energy density by volume at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. So the only way to pack enough hydrogen in a vehicle to get a reasonable range means either extremely high pressures or ultracold temperatures, both of which use up more energy.
Storing electricity via water electrolysis, compressiion for storage, and fuel cell has an overall efficiency of about 27%. Storing electricity via charger and batteries is 85% efficient. So, it needs 3x more solar panels, and with the cost of the electrolyzer and hydrogen storage, it will cost more than the equivalent grid tied solar system with battery storage.
It is amazing the pace of development Ricki by the time you have produced a video a new development has advanced. I love this Hoymiles concept. However there is another way to store hydrogen. Hamstrung by the US government it was not allowed patents till 2017 due to its disruptive nature. That company is Plasma Kinetics. Please review their process in a future video and how its storage method could mesh with low pressure in residence production.
Thanks for all your efforts.
Shhhhh! Binding hydrogen as an!hydrate is a good idea. But a suitcase size can ma
ke a really big mess!
they have talked of hydrogen cars for decades -- 6 fill up stations in the whole of uk -- like 3 pounds per kilo to buy
Yeah, and I see them driving around every day. It's awesome to see them dump hot water out the tail pipe. The Toyota Mirai has been out since 2014 and if you're in California they are everywhere, so your points are clearly moot. You just live in a rundown country.
@@filonin2 I prefer my model Y
*_Now_* who's cookin' with gas! Household hydrogen means we can use it for a gas stove, oven and BBQ as well as all your lawn mower, snow blower, and around town motor vehicle needs.
I believe H2 is more suited at grid level, coupled with long term storage to make up for low solar during winter months. At residential level solar + battery is sufficient and efficient.
Also, you provided the advertize efficiency or lab result, real world should be slightly less. H2 leaks, corrode metal pipes. You can't change physics which is on the side of Li batteries.
It's a good point, but the future of fossil-fuel-free energy requires input from all technologies. I think it's iomportant that companies like these push researhc forward. If the people who invented the solar panel got dispirited because of the high cost and low efficiency of the first lab-level PV cells, we wouldn't have dirt cheap solar power today. The same goes for lithium batteries. If get the same level of research and development for H2, things could evolve faster and challenge batteries, because, as you say, you can't change the physics and the inherent limitation of batteries in terms of energy density. Wouldn't you agree?
@@Israel_Two_Bit Yes it might happen but improbable. The problem is h2 is a light gas, takes a lot of volume, very low liquidfying temperature, explosive, less efficient as fuel is always < batteries for most chemistry. The sheer number of breakthrough required in many fields makes it more unlikely than 3000 wh/kg LiS Solid State batteries.
I envision solar thermal energy and thermal batteries becoming a strong player towards solving the intermittency problem of renewable energy. A large insulated tank of sand would make a decent thermal battery for cheap. You could also use a phase change material to store more energy without a huge swing in temperature. A Stirling engine can convert a temperature difference to electricity (and also the reverse) but using heat for heating is more efficient. It might make sense to have a mix of PV panels and thermal solar panels and use both thermal and electric batteries combined with the Stirling engine for conversion. A computer program could intake all relevant information and manage the system in a smart way converting if and when it makes sense to do so. One example could be more heat becomes electricity in the summer months.
Yes, I would switch to H2 powered vehicle with a 400-mile range.
I have a question: can these panels collect and store the water itself rather than splitting off the H2 and O2? I'm convinced that solar is an answer for most things, tho rhere is plenty of room to improvement. If so, how much water can be collected from various humidities? Not ready to invest in H2 just yet. Very informative video, though,. Keep it up
One situation where the hydrogen panel might be better is for example a house with a well issue, or areas where water is a more valuable or protected resource.
5:57 question answer: no, because my bev can already charge at home on my current much cheaper solar system and a 4 min recharge at home is usless when I can already charge overnight with the exact same or less effort.
i 100% agree with you!
Thanks for your quality videos. Couple of things though :
- hydrogen is no energy source, just as a battery is no energy source; both are just storage methods.
- comparison is incomplete: the whole system should be considered, fuel cells require mining too, although a lot less I guess.
- comparison should include complexity: solar => electricity => hydrogen => (compression =>) storage => fuel-cell => electricity, compared to solar => electriciy => storage (battery) => electricity
- Complexity again but on car level: a hydrogen car is essentially a complete BEV with a very small battery + the hydrogen-tank / fuel-cell system on top of it => very complex
I'm really not convinced hydrogen will ever really make sense in cars, or even if so, it's too late, BEVs have won. So the solution for these solar panels should rather focus on storage, mainly seasonal storage, but flow-batteries are probably the better solution for this use-case. And from a global energy production versus need perspective, in the context of the transition to clean energy, efficiency is top priority over comfort which in most cases range is. Range is mostly a psychological problem => the rational solution still is BEVs.
The way we currently produce hydrogen it is not an energy source. It is basically a storage device, storing the energy that we have put in to extracting hydrogen from other components.
All the BLEVE's will look fantastic.
Wonder if SolHyde has ever experimented with an on/off switch to disable/enable hydrogen production by these panels so as to eliminate the H2 storage issue. Then, say, you'd switch the panels to enable H2 prior to refueling your hydrogen vehicle, then switch them to disable H2 production after refueling is done.
Hydrogen is small & can get through normal seals. You really should dig into the details of the cooling, compression & storage issues in an up front way. Purity is the issue with a fuel cell membrane. Until there is a method to cycle a cleaning of the membrane, they have a very short life in the presence of minerals & other sediment.
hydrogen is very hard to store and leaks out of steel containers
And tubes and valves etc. pp.
I suggest you Watch Bob lazar explain how it's actually quite easy to store hydrogen and with the money put into one war, we'd easily have access to hydrogen storage.
I made a solar powered hydrogen cell around 15 years ago. People have been doing this for a long time. That's how I got the idea to make one.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
I am trying to learn more about GH2, what other startups have you seen building amazing stuff in this field?
I have a neighbor whose house burned down bc he was charging his Tesla and it overheated. Evidently those battery fires are insanely hot. Both his neighbors on either side also had serious damage. Evidently Lithum fires are more common than we are being told.
Can see a lot of home insurance companies having issues with this.
Thank you, I can’t wait for it to get on the market
I'd love to see a fully integrated home power system that uses solar and wind to charge a battery and compress/store hydrogen, instead of cobbling it together between multiple systems. Would be good for going completely off grid, or moving toward a decentralized grid, and having multiple types of backup system.
I'd love to see my home grown vaccum energy power generator aka Zero-Point module.
Everyone considering hydrogen as a fuel source should do this first:
1. Do the plumbing for a "on-demand" water heater, including gas lines. (if you actually do this, do the work, then have it checked by a professional to see how well you did.)
2. Replace an oil seal on any internal combustion engine of your choice.
These will give you a visceral understanding of the concept of making a good seal.
Now consider that hydrogen gas causes embrittlement of metals (and subsequent failure) and that pipe junctions are extremely difficult to seal (for us average folk)
This makes hydrogen a non-starter.
Though some solar electronics can be complicated, they are sold as easily replaceable modules that anyone can learn how to do.
Large profit incentives for battery technology will insure that batteries will become cheaper, safer and lighter over time.
Plasma Kinetics has a unique hydrogen storage technique that allows you to store hydrogen on a film. You don't have to compress hydrogen with this system so you cut out the major cost with normal hydrogen storage.
I looked at this from a technical standpoint - it is a lab party-trick, with very little practical use. Some people jump on the funding bandwagon with essentially nice-sounding but impractical ideas...
@@chrisheath2637 do you have any examples of what you mean?
Almost every time I see someone calculate the cost of a system amortized over a long time span, they neglect the "opportunity cost" of the initial investment. If you spend, for example, $16,000 putting 20 of these panels on your roof, and expect to use then for 30 years, you should add to the cost over that lifetime the money the $16,000 could have earned if invested somewhere.
It's not unreasonable to say the $16,000 could be invested somewhere that earned 6% per year. That's close to $1,000 per year in lost returns that you could have earned if you passed on installing the panels.
To make the math simpler, let's call that $50/year per panel.
Each panel makes 250 liters per day, they say. 91,250 liters per year. At standard atmospheric pressure and temperature, hydrogen gas is about 0.083 g/L. That works out to about 7.5 kg per panel per year. Divide the $800 cost of the panel by a 30 year life, and the cost per year is $27. Add the $50 in opportunity cost, and the total cost is $77/year. Hmmm. That means the hydrogen is actually costing 0ver $10 per kg.
And that neglect the cost of the compressors and tanks that would be needed in a practical set up.
The math doesn't work.
Plasma kinetics has a working ambient temperature and pressure hydrogen storage system. But its discharge qty is limited.
Being that it's pretty explosive, I vote for using most of the green hydrogen we can produce to power freight ships, locomotives and backup/peaker power plants. If there's enough left over then perhaps in homes.
1.: How do you propose to produce hydrogen?
2.: How do you propose to store the hydrogen?
3.: How do you propose to transport the hydrogen?
4.: How do you propose it should be converted in "freight ships, locomotives and backup/peaker power plants"? By burning it? Via fuel cells?
Or just combine with carbon dioxide out of the air and create methane and methanol.
One kilogram of hydrogen in liquid phase is around 14 Liters, that is quite a bit of volume you need to store and will be used up by a catalyst stove in about a minute.
Mr Hindenburg approves! This is the bomb! ;)
Nothing could possibly go worng!
No more dangerous than gasoline tanks in our cars and natural gas lines running to our ovens, water heaters, and dryers.
@@rob6850 it was pretty funny when he said that. And of course we know that something can always go wrong. But then again, it’s pretty much the same thing as piping natural gas to our houses which we already do.
Hope you have heard of the contemporary Hindenburg in news these days!
@@ecoideazventures6417 Not sure what you’re referring to. Gas line explosions? Like the PGE one in the Bay Area or the one that happened in Guadalajara??
I could see this used in cases where natural gas burners are replaced with H² burners, resulting in minimal infrastructure change and clean burning, as curent gas tops for exemple are horrible with CO and carcinogenic compounds.
If you are putting solar on you roof, and planning to use the harvested solar energy to cook with, you are throwing away a very large portion of the solar power. It would be much more economical in the long run to replace the gas cooktop with an induction cooktop. That utilizes the solar power to directly heat the pan - no wasted energy going past the pots and pans in the form of hot water vapor from the combustion of hydrogen.
@@jimmurphy5355
Used my induction hob 30 minutes ago.
Can't beat it.
I'll never use gas again.
@@jimmurphy5355 yes. But replacing a hot water boiler is more expensive. You just run the gas to the burner.
Also a gas turbine could cut cost and emission with a slightly more steady out put ( heat is also harvested) than direct solar with H² not needing to be stored at high pressure and a long time.
Im saying it could be a plug and play in very specific scenario with direct use or cheap low pressure storage.
@@GeorgeBP81 The panels cost triple what a standard solar panel costs. For much less than the extra cost of the hydrogen panels, it would be possible to replace the boiler with a heat pump unit.
Fuel at home doesn’t need a 4 to 5 minute recharge. This isn’t really an issue given one plugs it in at night and the next morning it is full.
A good and balanced video and I think that the choice of energy storage should be on the use case rather than politics but that's not the world we live in.
I'm not liking the twin-camera style you've been using in more recent videos. The disconcerting bit is when you turn from the camera while still delivering your lines and before transitioning to the other camera shot. Some of your transitions were cut so that you'd finished one sentence on the side camera then clean cut to the main camera and was much earlier viewing.
There are a couple ways to store hydrogen with a low pressure system and it can be used heating water or house just like natual gas or to run a generator. One is a container in a container filled with water and as it is filled one rises as the gas displaces the water. The first tank could be mostly burried in the ground. The other way is like a giant air matress, perhaps with its own building to protect it. For daily use they could be practical, but for long term, they would need to be huge.
We got those large buildings in our larger cities that produced city gas until about the 1980s when it was replaced by natural gas. They have all been refurbished and are now being used for public venues, malls etc. They are called Gasometer. Actually they had a primary use, constant gas pressure for the whole city.
And no: You can not compress hydrogen in the way you think. That does not work. Sorry, it just does not work.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 Interesting. I don't know what you think I think about compressing hydrogen, but it can be compressed just like air can. Unlike air though, care must be given because it is flamable it needs to be treated more like natual gas or propane and because it is of small molecule size, it is able to go though smaller gaps in seals, defects in valves, etc.
Why would you take 4 times as much energy to heat water or your home with hydrogen when you can use 1/4 the electricity and use a heat pump? Also you need special containers to hold hydrogen since it is the smallest molecule in the universe it will embed itself in just about any material causing hydrogen embrittlement.
If it was a 60 to 75 kWh battery where are you can of course plug-in at any traditional charging station. And then made me have an additional tank for hydrogen that can maybe produce another 30 to 40 kWh worth of power now you’ve got something that’s compelling enough. Because even if you don’t have 100 and filling station should still be able to travel around 240 to 300 miles electric only with a sort of range extender, it would still be fine for a road trips and you could just use the hydrogen at home as a means to charge up
ur camera switches could use sum improvement bro... or just cut em out.
I have a question; all I have seen so far entail STORING hydrogen, but why bother with storage if you just generate it as needed and to fulfill demand. In other words a generate on demand system, and scale up or down the volume as required?
Solhyde panels are to solar panels with third party electrolyzers what a sealed beam headlight is to a headlamp with separate bulb, reflector, and lens. 🙂
Might be an interesting way to dehumidify indoor air and save money on air-conditioning in humid climates.
A problem with moist air when cooled is that as it condenses it gives off lots of heat (latent heat of condensation) with each gram of water that's condensed, releasing that heat to the airconditioner coils forcing you to run your airconditioner more. If you reduce the amount of water in the air, you lower the temperaure at which it condenses and saves energy to cool your home.
But it takes energy to turn it into hydrogen? Yes but apparently that's 95% efficent and the energy is stored chemically, not lost. Adittional to using it to run a car, one can use it with a fuel cell for backup power for their home.
Antidotally, my central air conditioner condenses about 10 gallons of water a day during the hot days of summer. It would be phenomenal if that could be reduced in half, Turning the other 5 gallons of water into about 4.63 pounds of hydrogen and 37.06 pounds of oxygen.
Maybe releasing some of oxygen into the home might improve the home's air quality or may benefit oxygen concentrators for those who need them.
SUPER IDEA . POZDRAWIAM .
Why not set up a home charging network, where you can sell your charger time when you're not using it? An AirBNB type hydrogen charging platform? Could also be done for electric. You'd put the charging station close to the curb or near end of your driveway. The network would show where charging is available.
I say Lavo system with direct electrolysis of the air like the panel..Neat there is a way we can make high pressure H2 through the electrolysis process...
Great explanation (as always), just one minor criticism about the video if I may, the continual switching back and forth between cameras was quite distracting.
You swivel between two cameras so much in your videos now. Thats awesome so much better then others
i kinda also wanna be able to generate electricity from excess hydrogen made. maybe use it in a stove burner? IDK. the best part about having liquid hydrogen stored is that you can use it whenever. I seen people make hydrogen powered generators work just the same as gas ones.
If I could refuel at home, you can bet businesses would find a way to monetize the same tech and refueling stations would pop up. I dont like batteries so yes, i would switch over. Great video. You channel is awesome.