Florida: Total Eclipse

[touchring]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

I accept all your points HV, but I still hate the "mission accomplished" manner in which the technology is presented when it's obvious that we're nowhere near there yet. (There being commercially produced hydrogen from renewable sources.) It's like the way people are clamoring for electric cars without thinking about where the electricity is going to come from to run them. It drives me crazy.

Electric cars are only good for short commutes where you will travel no more than 50 miles in a single day. even that, you'll still be charging every night.

[GRG55]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

Or This:

...During my only trip to the US I was amazed at how wasteful Americans are with fuel. The boats are far too big and the engines clumsily burn far too much fuel to carry far too few people...

[we_are_toast]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

Where does the energy to produce the hydrogen come from? and How much hydrogen can you compress into a tank without loosing it?

The Hydrogen Economy - Energy and Economic Black Hole

The efficiency argument for wind and solar is rather silly. Efficiency isn't much of an issue for an energy source which is free and nearly limitless. The issues are; is hydrogen as a transportation fuel, technically and economically feasible. At current gasoline prices, the production of hydrogen through electrolysis seems certainly competitive. The problem seems to be with storage in the vehicle, and the distribution system. And I'm not sure if it's more economical to produce electricity with a fuel cell for an electric motor, or to simply burn the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. We most certainly should be spending a lot of research money into the vehicle storage problem. If this problem is solved, it would truly be a culturally transformative technology.

[c1ue]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

The efficiency argument for wind and solar is rather silly. Efficiency isn't much of an issue for an energy source which is free and nearly limitless.

The problem, of course, is neither wind nor solar are either free nor limitless.

They're not free because they are nowhere near grid-parity to the cost of producing electricity - even with historic low interest rates reducing the opportunity cost of capital invested. The Cape wind farm project Obama referenced assumes subsidies per Kwh generated which are twice the actual market price of electricity, on top of which hundreds of millions of dollars of capital spending subsidies are pledged via both direct payments and tax benefits.

They're not free also because they require 100% backup in the form of either fossil fuels or nuclear power generation. This backup runs inefficiently and still requires construction as overall electricity demand is still growing.

They're not free because they require infrastructure investment such as transmission infrastructure: hundreds and thousands of miles of 'last mile' wiring for wind energy; hundreds and thousands of miles of high voltage transmission lines for both wind and CSP.

And finally they're not limitless: solar cells have a lifetime of 20 years - non-monocrystalline cells will lose 50% of their generating capacity even within that span. Wind turbines equally have a 20 year lifespan - though actually experience is showing this number may be 3 times too high.

[we_are_toast]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

The problem, of course, is neither wind nor solar are either free nor limitless.

They're not free because they are nowhere near grid-parity to the cost of producing electricity - even with historic low interest rates reducing the opportunity cost of capital invested. The Cape wind farm project Obama referenced assumes subsidies per Kwh generated which are twice the actual market price of electricity, on top of which hundreds of millions of dollars of capital spending subsidies are pledged via both direct payments and tax benefits.

They're not free also because they require 100% backup in the form of either fossil fuels or nuclear power generation. This backup runs inefficiently and still requires construction as overall electricity demand is still growing.

They're not free because they require infrastructure investment such as transmission infrastructure: hundreds and thousands of miles of 'last mile' wiring for wind energy; hundreds and thousands of miles of high voltage transmission lines for both wind and CSP.

And finally they're not limitless: solar cells have a lifetime of 20 years - non-monocrystalline cells will lose 50% of their generating capacity even within that span. Wind turbines equally have a 20 year lifespan - though actually experience is showing this number may be 3 times too high.

Of course the infrastructure and capital costs are true for any centralized energy source, whether it's Alt-E or fossil fuel. Same with the subsidy issue. Take away the enormous subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, add in the socialized cost of the environmental damage, and fossil fuel electricity production wouldn't even be competitive at todays prices. The back up issue is nonexistent if your goal is to produce hydrogen since it would be decades before your production exceeded demand. The big difference is that wind and Sun are free and will be there as far into the future as you can see, where fossil fuels will only be increasing in price and threatening our environment, national security, and economy, and won't be economically available for most of our great grandchildren.

[c1ue]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

Of course the infrastructure and capital costs are true for any centralized energy source, whether it's Alt-E or fossil fuel. Same with the subsidy issue. Take away the enormous subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, add in the socialized cost of the environmental damage, and fossil fuel electricity production wouldn't even be competitive at todays prices.

While certainly there is a lot that CAN be gained from better alternative energy sources, simply throwing money at what is available today won't reap the majority of those gains and in fact would likely stunt progress.

Secondly you fail to distinguish between past SUNK costs and future costs. The sunk costs are already paid for, the future costs have to come out of everyone's pocket.

Simply because the subsidies for fossil fuels were outrageous, does not in turn mean that the subsidies for alternative energy should be outrageous.

Lastly I'd note that the net socialized costs of environmental damage from fossil fuels are not clearly negative.

For every oily bird, there is a bridge, road, hospital, train, or some other fossil fuel derived construct which has improved human existence.

And if the goal isn't human existence, then you should just be up front and say that human existence is the problem.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

And if the goal isn't human existence, then you should just be up front and say that human existence is the problem.

That sounds like a false dichotomy to me, c1ue.

There is a third way where the goal is neither optimizing solely for human existence nor declaring human existence a problem.

[BigBagel]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

Or This:

Coming back to Florida from Havana after a downing a few mojitos.

[Minion]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

The chart is telling a tale of imminent bankruptcy, about a month away......

[c1ue]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

There is a third way where the goal is neither optimizing solely for human existence nor declaring human existence a problem.

True, but then again what exactly is the goal? I would argue that the needle all through history has been 100% towards human existence; the damage to 'pristine' nature is a consequence and not a goal.

Human existence can be redefined to reduce damage to Nature, but again the basic goal is still the same: Better education. Better opportunities. Better transportation. Better standards of living. etc etc.

If instead an optimal state of human existence is defined, that would be fine as a paradigm change.

But at least to me, it is quite obvious that the present environmental movement exists more as a negation of the present than a standard for the future.

[Jam]

Re: Florida: Total Eclipse

Boy, it sure looks like Alice Friedemann (the author of the quoted article) has an axe to grind against hydrogen. Not sure how much I would trust the statements she made though. There are some errors in what she writes. For example, she proves herself lacking in basic math.

The average cost of a natural gas pipeline is one million dollars per mile, and we have 200,000 miles of natural gas pipeline [...] If we were to build a similar infrastructure to deliver hydrogen it would cost $200 trillion.

Last time I checked 200,000 x 1,000,000 = 200,000,000,000, which is 200 billion, not 200 trillion. Granted, $200B is a large number, but it is some 1.4% of U.S. GDP and not 7 times the GDP.
Then, there is this useless tidbit

Hydrogen has the lowest ignition point of any fuel, 20 times less than gasoline.

Ignition point (redirected to "fire point" by Wikipedia) is temperature, so unless she is using the absolute Kelvin scale, the "20 times" has no meaning. The value of "ignition point" is harder to find than the related flash point (according to Wikipedia, ignition point can be assumed to be 10 degrees higher than flash point). But then we have (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogen...fs/fcm01r0.pdf)

The flashpoint is always lower than the boiling point. For fuels that are gases at atmospheric conditions (like hydro-gen, methane and propane), the flashpoint is far below am-bient temperature and has little relevance since the fuel is already fully vaporized.

On the other hand the autoignition point of gasoline is lower than hydrogen, and some people claim that this makes hydrogen actually safer than gasoline (this, plus its low density, which makes hydrogen just float away rather than stick close to the ground and burn like gasoline).

Ok, to be sure, I am not defending hydrogen here, but I would be highly skeptical of an article like this one that displays viscous one-sided attack against it.