Wind power fails in Texas

[Bio]

You and @JAD are correct in that H2 is an energy storage system. However, the avenues for efficient commercial production have barely been explored. Is it viable to use solar to produce H2 onsite in sunny locations? Can we use waste heat from Nuke and Gas plants to help make H2, maybe improve the economics for those plants? What is the comparative energy loss between, for example, using a nuke plant to make H2 vs the losses incurred sending electrons through wires to power a Tesla?

https://cafcp.org/stationmap

/drift

Hey, if technology progresses to the point where it works, awesome. I'm just skeptical. Hydrogen storage requires power just to keep it cold enough to store it, and it still leaks out because hydrogen is so small that it sneaks between the molecules that make the tank. I'll admit my main understanding of it is through a hobbyist level of following space exploration, where hydrogen is essential for its high energy density, but absolutely sucks logistically.

[farscott]

Yikes. Is this basically an A/C issue, or would chest freezers and refrigerators be subject to this problem?

It is basically an issue with any load that needs a lot of current to get started. If the peak current is too much for the output, the voltage will drop. One of the reasons Honda generators are so good is Honda design allows for considerably higher peak current to get the load started (say 7000W peak for a 6500W generator).

Chest freezers and refrigerators typically take much less current as the compressors are smaller and the appliance design has considered the issue by soft-starting the compressor.

[JAD]

You and @JAD are correct in that H2 is an energy storage system. However, the avenues for efficient commercial production have barely been explored. Is it viable to use solar to produce H2 onsite in sunny locations? Can we use waste heat from Nuke and Gas plants to help make H2, maybe improve the economics for those plants? What is the comparative energy loss between, for example, using a nuke plant to make H2 vs the losses incurred sending electrons through wires to power a Tesla?

https://cafcp.org/stationmap

/drift

I reject your termination of thread drift.

All of the applications for hydrogen you mention are valid. Your last sentence identifies the technology frontier: it is currently *insanely* wasteful to make hydrogen. It will get better, and I believe in hydrogen as a more energy-dense means of storage for some applications. For the present, though, anything we can -currently- do with hydrogen we can do much better with batteries. Don't get dragged into the buzzword -- energy storage, whether through flow batteries, solid state lithium, sodium, or hydrogen -- is an enabling component in a *power generation* strategy that has to encompass nukes, renewables, and carbon to work for the next fifty years.

[Shotgun]

The Hydrogen Economy came out in 2002 or 2003. https://www.amazon.com/Hydrogen-Econ.../dp/1585422541

I suppose we are still a long way from that.