...hydrogen can be created from a process that separates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in water. The Douglas County Public Utility District plans to use its surplus hydropower to do just that...It's nothing but "a process." How hard can that be? I'll bet even Poindexter and Peabody could do it, and cheaply, too.
The second law of thermodynamics is hard to work around. It cannot be repealed by executive order, nor even by unanimous vote of Washington legislature.
It is actually hard to conceptualize. Most people do not understand it. Especially the legislators.
Entropy of the insulated system never decreases!
Whatever you do, you are loosing energy. Since we are making Hydrogen, we need to add energy and the energy content of the product will be less of what we have started from.
So the Hydrogen fuel-cell is like the battery, it stores some of the energy delivered to make hydrogen and it is able to return some of it.