Posted on 01/10/2008 9:50:11 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's vision of a "hydrogen highway" - 100 fueling stations by 2010 that would make it practical for California motorists to use non-polluting hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles - has hit a roadblock.
Each of the last three agencies that received state funding to build a fueling station has decided not to pursue the project, ...
In addition, three stations have recently closed, including one in Richmond that served county buses and was dismantled this week.
That means the state is now down to 23 stations amid concerns that the technology is not viable in the near future ...
'Things have changed'
PG&E's decision to turn down $1.5 million in state funds to build a large-scale, retail hydrogen station in San Carlos is especially noteworthy. The site was supposed to serve as a hub for hundreds of Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles that were going to be leased next year in Northern California - the first significant effort to make the vehicles available to the public.
Instead, PG&E officials said they've shifted hydrogen to the back stage and now consider it a distant technology, with electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids moving to the front of the line.
"Things have changed," said Jill Egbert, manager of PG&E's Clean Air Transportation division. "We feel hydrogen is a long-term solution, but there is no one technology that will be the silver bullet to meet transportation needs. From a resource standpoint, we feel a more pressing need to see how electric vehicles will affect our grid."
--snip--
"This is a significant change in attitude. People are simply refusing to participate, even if they get money from the state. If state officials don't step in, the hydrogen highway could collapse," said V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Its funny how command economies never work as well as the free market. I guess we just need to crack a few more heads to make this wonderful idea work.
Hydrogen cars are a wonderful idea if we can get them working and economical. 2/3 of our imported oil is for transportation.
Text book case of insanity. Didn't Cali have electric charging stations in a similar scheme that they dismantled years ago because of the same reasons?
Renewable Energy PING?
The planners simply don’t move fast enough to adjust to reality.
While electric cars are more efficient than gasoline cars, hydrogen cars are no better — just more expensive, more dangerous, and less range. Let’s do the math.
Fossil fuel electricity, like we use today: 50% efficient
Transmission to electrolysis center: Let’s say 99% efficient
AC/DC conversion: 85% efficient
Electrolysis: Let’s be nice and say 90% efficient
Hydrogen storage and transportation: Let’s be nice and say 90% efficient
Fuelling: Let’s say that there’s no storage medium (which means even less vehicle range, but more efficient fuelling), and be nice and say 95%.
Converting hydrogen to electricity in a fuel cell: Let’s give it an efficient 70%
Electricity to torque in an efficient brushless DC motor: 85%
Net result: 19.2%: *Less* efficient at turning fossil fuels into torque than a current gasoline engine (let alone a diesel engine).
Electric cars do better (since they don’t have to do electrolysis or use fuel cells, and li-ion batteries lose almost nothing in charge/discharge), and there are fast charging batteries already hitting the market, which solves one of their big problems. But until they can get the range of gasoline vehicles, which will probably be at least a decade, only governments manipulating the market can force widespread adoption of them.
Everything pollutes. Sheesh!
Still gotta generate gobs of electricity to produce all the hydrogen that's going to be needed. We might be able to do that if we were willing to build nuclear plants, fast breeder reactors, etc. But I don't see any of that happening...
Hmm, touche. Although I believe GM has said that they will have a hydrogen car on the market by 2010 that could compete with traditional cars in price if it was mass manufactured.
Hydrogen is the wrong direction. If you really want to move off gasoline, and don’t want to be wasting a ton of energy and adding a lot of needless complexity and danger, electrics are the way to go. The “battery lifespan” and “charge time” issues are already gone; the only thing left is range. EEStor has an ultracapacitor coming out later this year that they say will beat Li-ion by a factor of three. We’ll have to see if they can deliver, but at least Lockheed thinks it’s legit. ZPower has silver-zinc cells that are 40% more energy dense than li-ion, but the silver costs a fortune (you can recycle it, but there’s still the sticker shock and interest on your purchase). A Stanford team developed (and plans to commercialize in about five years) a silicon nanowire li-ion battery which can currently get “several” times better energy density than what’s out there and could be scaled to ten times better density — but again, we’ll have to see if they can deliver. As for safety, only a few types of li-ion chemistry are particularly flammable (unfortunately, among them is what we use in laptops), and as for a short, the current will take the most direct, lowest resistance path rather than going through you.
Apart from the range issue, electrics are pretty sweet. The second fastest accelerating car in the world is an electric (the Wrightspeed), and that’s without nearly the research dollars of gasoline vehicles. I’m sure they’ll be the fastest before long without much trouble. Their drivetrains are really simple, and so as long as the batteries have a long lifespan, there’s very little to maintain. Even their transmission is simpler. They’re quiet, efficient, and you can charge them from home (slowly) if you don’t want to go to a gas station for a fast charge. And they’re cheap as hell to run. So, I’m not in the “gasoline forever” camp. Build a nuclear power plant in my backyard, hook it up to my high-horsepower long-range electric car, and you sure won’t hear any complaints out of me.
But where are you going to get the energy to produce the hydrogen? Since California is becoming more an more dependent on natural gas for power production, they are really just trading being dependent on imported oil for being dependent on imported natural gas.
They are adding a lot of expense without solving the problem of being dependent on foreign sources of energy.
Eh, that’s not an issue. We only average running at something like 45% of our nation’s peak capacity at any given time. If they’re willing to only generate hydrogen with non-peak electricity (i.e., not in the middle of the day during the summer when everyone’s AC is running full blast), they could still pull it off.
The problem is, why? Hydrogen is just as bad for the environment as gasoline when you consider all the losses, it’s worse for your pocketbook, it’s worse for your safety... really, why bother?
Better to spend money putting solar arrays up on roofs and powering cars at least partially via the grid.
Exactly! If you're going to use the electric infrastructure for alternative transportation, focus on improving electrical storage (batteries? capacitors?) and use electric vehicles instead of building a whole new infrastructure to handle hydrogen.
How are they planning to deliver enough current to charge all these electric cars quickly during peak times?
They can use huge (and expensive) capacitors at homes and at charging stations to try and spread out the demand spikes, but you are talking about a huge increase in demand for electricity.
That creates huge issues in not only generating that much power, but in delivering it to customers.
Forgive me my stupidity, but don’t we need water for hydrogen production? And if so, where pray tell will we get that water? Isn’t this going the same way ethanol is going? You need water to process ethanol, like 3 to 1? How is that conserving? I say follow the money when it comes to environmentalists.
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