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[Fran K]

That is an easy to write article.  How many of the 1000 produced are still in use?  How about the ones that went bad during the 5 year warranty period?  My guess is there is a clause that they can buy you out instead of fix it.  The newer one's pieces won't fit the earlier ones.

[Richard230]

An article in my newspaper today, published by CalMatters, says that California "may pay $300 million for hydrogen fuel stations despite low demand". The article says that "Chevron, Shell and Toyota are seeking a 30% share of money from the state Clean Transportation Program, amounting to $300 million over the next decade." The program is funded by annual fees paid by California drivers, $6 every time you renew your license each year.

"So far, the California Energy commission has spent $202 million for hydrogen fuel stations. Yet there is still low demand for the cars, with sluggish sales. Only two hydrogen models are available, the Toyota Mirai and the Hundai Nexo, and only 1,767 have been sold in California this year. Last year's sales declined 20%, although sales are up this summer."

"In all, Californians own only about 12,000 hydrogen-powered cars, compared to more than 760,000 powered by batteries."

H2 stations will triple by 2027, resulting in four times more than the amount needed to support even the vehicle manufacturer's best case expected volume.

Meanwhile, the state estimates that it will need nearly 1.2 million chargers for battery-powered cars by 2030. Only about 88,000 are now installed.

[Specter]

This is the thing I find humorous about this whole movement.  They'll cry and whine about lack of availability to charge their electric cars, then turn around and run to Hydrogen, which has an even worse support infrastructure in place!

Are the people seriously THAT retarded or what?
Oh wait, for only 56K you can get a HOME HYDROGEN GENERATOR CHARGING SYSTEM!!!!!!

FWIW, Hydrogen is not lighter either.  Those bottles to hold either the pressurized H2 OR if they substrate it, are heavy as shit, so NO there really is no weight advantage over electric and Li Batteries.  It takes gobs of electric to break down water into H2 for your car, which means energy waste in the process, so why not just stick with the electric car and not waste that power in the splitting process?  If you are doing this H2 thing, because you claim to care about mother earth,  wank wank eyes roll back ahhhh puke.... educate yourself, you really are NOT doing ANYONE any favors with this one doofus!

Im just saying, some of us are geeky nerd boys who love cutting edge fringe tech and yes we WILL pay the stupid high prices to be first, or to get in on the cutting edge etc etc, but for more normal people, you KNOW what it is, you SEE what it is, so quit crying about it's price, wait for it to tech itself out and come down like every OTHER tech to this point has!

I LOVE my electric bike! but also am fully aware, no there are NOT going to be fast chargers every other street corner for me, to support my bike!  That day, is honestly years if not decades away!

Now, with all that being said.   EVERYBODY LOVES FREE SHIT!!!   Don't fucking pretend you don't because you will be a liar if you do!!  But is it really 'fair' that every single driver on the road has to pay for YOUR VEHICLE?  One could argue that you pay taxes too so yes, which is a lovely communistic reply but at the end of the day, do you like paying 1000 a year for someone else to be able to drive their fringe-mobile.  Wouldn't you like to keep that money for YOURSELF, to pay for your OWN vehicle??

I'll take it while it's there, I won't BS you and say I won't, but the days of 'the masses' supplementing your electric / hydrogen etc etc,vehicle are going to be gone real soon!  the ICE people are getting tired of it, and you honestly can not blame them one bit!

I very soon see, where every year, when you renew your tags at the DMV, they start taxing you by your Odometer to get the taxes that used to be baked into gasoline sales.  It's coming.  Hold on!

If not that, then every charging station, their 'fees' will include all kinds of BS taxes that politicians will figure out a way to put into them.  How snazzy and 'cheaper' than ICE is your E - car now?

Aaron

[Richard230]

My newspaper had a comment in a column today from a SF Bay Area driver of a hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai complaining about the cost of hydrogen fuel for her vehicle. She said that the cost per liter has risen from $16 one year ago to nearly $36 now. She was asking why the price has increased so much. She also commented that: "The half-dozen hydrogen stations in the greater San Jose area seem to be offline an awful lot, especially lately." She goes on to say: "Half the time we can't even pay the high prices if we wanted to! It is becoming a real inconvenience." She asks what is going on with H2 fuel and the poorly maintained stations?

The fellow writing the "Roadshow" column commented that: "Our daughter drove a hydrogen-powered car for a few years and also found the refueling very inconvenient at times." He asks his readers if they know more about the hydrogen fuel market than he does.

[Specter]

Power plants use hydrogen extensively for generator cooling.  Those prices are spiking as well.  Not sure why the fuel side is getting so ridiculous though, it should pretty much be the same truck that delivers it to the gas station as the power station.

You said they sell it per liter, so the car uses liquid hydrogen?  hmm how do they keep it cool?

Aaron

[Fran K]

Maybe the Hydrogen market is kind of like the Damon and Lightning motorcycle scene in that it is the moto journalists that get to have a positive outcome.  Like, subscribe, comment must benefit the sites and authors.

I have stood by a compressor for sucba diving tanks.  It looked to be 6 stage and was noisy.  Add to that just getting the hydrogen to the compressor.  Sure you can go liquid like a liquid oxygen tank that vents to cool if withdraw is not happening.

Years ago before internet forums I was going to a discussion group (you did this in the same program for email and came standard with a dial up account) I kind of gave up when the low pressure dissolved in something spelled close to hydride or halide quite similar to acetylene dissolved in acetone, I am familiar with.  Even PBS nova program at the time had shows showing shooting with a rifle that storage method and gasoline tank.

If you think about it we are compressing natural gas to send to places, so they don't buy pipeline gas from countries that we put economic sanctions on.  Where is the base stock for this hydrogen coming from?

[Richard230]

Power plants use hydrogen extensively for generator cooling.  Those prices are spiking as well.  Not sure why the fuel side is getting so ridiculous though, it should pretty much be the same truck that delivers it to the gas station as the power station.

You said they sell it per liter, so the car uses liquid hydrogen?  hmm how do they keep it cool?

Aaron

I was wondering about that too. If you have seen the photos of the Skylonda H2 station that I have posted in this thread before you will see that the station sure has a lot of equipment doing something. I can only assume that it (if it was operating) manufactures H2 from electrical power, pressures the H2 and then cools it really cold, storing it in very well insulated containers. Then it must be delivered to the vehicle under high pressure (you get your choice of 350 bar or 700 bar from the pump). Sounds like more trouble than it is worth. If it is sold by the liter for $36, I sure hope that you can go a lot further on H2 than on a liter of gas or a few KWh of electricity. I also wonder how much of the cost are taxes?

[Specter]

I can not see a car using liquid hydrogen unless it's in a substrate like Acetylene is in vermiculite basically.  Hydrogen typically is not a liquid at room temps no matter how hard it's compressed, it needs to be cooled.  But as mentioned, they vent.  We have small hydrogen fires all the time on the units, you can barely see them, they are pretty much invisible except in the dead of night you see the faint glow of the flame.  The friction of hissing thru a pinhole leak will ignite it.  Hydrogen is stupidly flammable and very explosive too.  It can be compressed pretty good though, the trucks have huge steel flasks they tote it around in

aaron

[Fran K]

Acetylene in the cylinder is dissolved in acetone.  I am or was under the impression there was a honeycomb like structure in the tank maybe that is vermiculite.  The word is Metal hydrides  I found that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage  I suspect it is a gas to solid no liquid hydrogen involved.

My search choice currently is bing and it is AI now and very frustrating however it suggested this article.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25349983  Squeeze olivine and get serpentine and hydrogen.  Sounds like minerals in basalt.

[Specter]

It is most likely compressed, kind of like the CNG vehicles you see running about, probably a  few K/psi.  I remember the day the moron over filled our Hydrogen tank and lifted the safety, holy shit it sounded like the space shuttle was taking off, shook the whole building for a few minutes.  Needless to say, that driver never came back.

I have not did a thorough search, nor have I went into the wayback machine but they used to sell a BBQ that ran off of hydrogen gas, claimed the meat was very moist, because well, the waste gas is water.  That would just be so dangerous though, lighting it and if you had the slightest leak, man.  I also remember one day we did a balloon like that video and we set it loose over the St Johns river in the middle of the night, with about a 40 foot string and some lighter fluid on it,   umm.  let's just say it was... moving....  the hardest part was going outside like everyone else, and trying to play the ..derp... what was that?? game without laughing our asses off.    ahh the stupidity of youth

Aaron

[Richard230]

There are two (non-functioning) pumps at the H2 station. One is marked 350 bar and the other 700 bar. I am not sure what that converts to psi, but it does sound like the H2 is highly compressed and not liquid. I am also not sure how you measure a liter of compressed gas.   

[Specter]

Bar is basically a fancy term to say atmosphere pressure, or atmospheres.   14.5 is a good number for an estimate.   Every bar is 14.5 psi.  so roughly 5000 and 10000 PSI for those pumps.

with newer tech, the storage tanks are spun material and composites now instead of steel in many applications to save weight.  It will still be a gas I believe.  You would have to bring it to about 250 C below zero and around 1000 bar to liquify it if I remember my tables correctly.

Aaron

[Fran K]

I am also not sure how you measure a liter of compressed gas.   

In the welding gasses the volume of gas you get billed for or the cylinders are called is in standard cubic feet at 40psi.  The biggest compressed gas cylinder to choose in normal use is 336 and the next size down is 220.  Generally, those have to be leased maybe the biggest you can own and get refilled/swapped out is 80 or so though that probably can vary.  Natural gas lots of meters visible on the retail billing end and surely bigger higher pressure ones near the well head.


Also hydrogen embrittlement of steel.  Hydrogen dis associates into H as opposed to a molecule H2.  H is super tiny and gets into the steel crystal or grain structure but if it meets up with another H it turns into H2 which is much bigger.  On beyond the freezing of water and expanding and breaking stuff.  I thought it was general knowledge.  No steel tanks.  Maybe the real long one foot diameter tanks you see on a big rig are steel but they sure must keep track for an expiration date.  One of those kind of hydrogen trucks came off the highway in a crash and the fire dept evacuated quite a few houses, must have been 10 or so years ago now in the western part of the state.  Might have been silly hydrogen is real light and goes up but who knows what the emergency responders can do in a crash situation.

[Richard230]

The attached article contains more information regarding public H2 fueling stations in California. It sounds like Shell has lost interest in the public H2 business.

[Richard230]

I haven't heard much about using Hydrogen power to generate electricity lately, but I did hear this morning that the California PUC approved the continued use of California's last nuclear power station until the year 2030. It was scheduled to close, due to its ageing infrastructure and cost of maintenance (plus being built next to an earthquake fault), in 2025. PG&E, the owner of the facility, says that it will cost over $8 billion to keep the plant running another five years. The utility company is likely already planning electric rate increases to pay for the future maintenance of the reactors.