A Fully Distributed Power Grid? 389
rleyton writes "There's an interesting and topical black-out article on an "internet inspired" hydrogen powered energy network. The premise is homes, cars, factories and offices store up hydrogen when energy is available, and supply it into the new energy network when it's not. Certainly an intriguing idea, with some interesting comments on future power management. Feasible in the next "three decades"? Perhaps."
Awesome Idea (Score:1, Insightful)
A bit more difficult (Score:2, Insightful)
rant (Score:1, Insightful)
It was amusing last week when on the day of the power outage there were stories from several days before talking about the power grid and problems with it. It's a week later, everyone knows it happened, everyone has a theory on how to fix it. The timeliness is gone, just tell us the theory of the day.
Re:Awesome Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can find some, I'm game.
the question (Score:1, Insightful)
I have always thought that this stuff is highly explosive.
Grid Repair? (Score:2, Insightful)
interesting idea, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
security? (Score:4, Insightful)
We are all living through the nightmares of security problems brought in by the internet, do we take that along too?
Geez Louise (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the distributed side of this argument, I've thought it was a good idea for years. Whether or not we do it with hydrogen, we need to do it. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of...wait, let me start that again. Imagine every house's roof covered not with wood shake, or spanish tile, or what-have-you, but with photovoltaic cells. Now imagine that people's cars run on domestically-produced hydrogen. And when I say "domestic", I mean "in the household". Produced by electrolysis, in your own house, using electricity from your (and your neighbors', and everyone else's on the grid) rooftop photovoltaics plus water from your tap. Storage plants run electrolysis too, storing hydrogen for nighttime, when they burn it again and send the power back out again.
Now compare that to our current state of affairs: the vast majority of our electricity coming from coal or gas, much of it imported; our cars running on gasoline, almost all of it imported.
Now try and tell me it doesn't make sense to switch.
Centralised vs Distributed (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course a fully distributed power network makes a whole lot of sense as well, anyone looking at the recent power blackout could tell you that. If a connected system is poorly designed a breakdown in one place affects everywhere. A distributed power generation and/or storage system solves this but at increased cost.
The critical facts are:
Storing power always costs and always will, it's way better to use it when you generate it.
Overly redundant generation capacity to handle peaks costs
In the aftermath of the big blackout it was inevitable we would see loads of "solutions" appear to the problem but nothing I've seen really address these underlying issues. We want power cheaper and widespread linkup of our grids is the way to do it.
There is no perfect solution, if a power station goes down someone is probably going to loose power, limiting the affect is a matter of good design, lets not rebuild the world because of a 24hr blackout.
Re:Except that (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now, houses have natural gas lines, propane tanks and tons of spray cans and other explosive items. A hydrogen tank is no more dangerous.
And on hydrogen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:HYDROGEN Powered? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flywheels? (Score:4, Insightful)
An exercise left for the student: (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
The hydrogen you use could also come from catalyzing natural gas at your end, or by using non-grid power to crack water.
The advantage over gasoline and propane is that you can make it yourself. Just TRY to find an easy way to refill your gasoline tank using only electricity (or for extra credit, sunlight or wind) and water. With hydrogen, you're off and running.
To sum it all up-- hydrogen is best thought of as a storage method, not a fuel. And the processes by which you can get it are simple enough to perform in your house, using the two most common power sources already present, natural gas and electricity.
Of course, I don't see anything like this happening nationwide any time soon, either. But it's the sort of thing I'd like to have around the house. A huge UPS for everything!
Hydrogen is NOT A POWER SOURCE. (Score:5, Insightful)
Other sources for "charging your hydrogen battery" are catalyzing natural gas, or using your SuperHippie 3000 Solar Panel Array to do it without having to mess with the grid.
One more time, and I will also exhort you to THINK!... the power still comes from where it does now. Hydrogen is the storage mechanism not the power source.
And why hydrogen over, say, gasoline or propane? Because you can't make gasoline out of water and sunlight.
Re:Generating is not the problem. (Score:1, Insightful)
You lost me there. The is not a single deregulated energy market in the entire United States. Texas and Mass are closest, but still gov't controlled. Please try to find one so I can give you a $10,000 prize.
The state of solar power... (Score:3, Insightful)
"1 solar electric module [oksolar.com]: UNBREAKABLE EFFICIENT SHADOW PROTECTED AND LOW COST UL and CUL listed, NEW 20 year warranty."
Just imagine if a fraction of Uncle Sam's money that's being spent on hydrogen power research was used as incentives to builders and homeowners to use these shingles.
This is the stupidest idea I've ever heard (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, so you propose to install a big rechargeable battery in my home, so that when the grid goes down I won't lose power. And if I think I can spare it, maybe sell a little back to the grid in times of crisis. (Note: The fact that the battery is a hydrogen fuel cell is totally irrelevant -- to me it's just a battery.)
This might have utility as a competitor to the current technology (gas-powered backup generators), although as a homeowner I like the fact that a generator can run indefinitely. However, it's just silly as a solution to global power problems:
Hydrogen advocates just can't build a compelling case for anything. As a favor, please don't bother us any more until you can make a usable replacement for these crappy cell phone and laptop batteries.
Economies of Scale.... (Score:1, Insightful)
A few scientific notes related to the idea of hyrogen storage:
1. Hydrogen is not a wonderful means of storing energy. It's molecules are very small, small enough to penetrate the walls of an ordinary metallic holding tank and escape slowly over time. Also, it's energy density is not as high as currently used fuels. (There are more hydrogen atoms in a gallon of gasoline than in a gallon of liquid hydrogen.) Go back to your organic chemistry textbook and look it up.
2. Stop mentioning the energy loss over transmission lines. It is not significant. The reason we use transformers is to increase the AC line voltage to an extreme level, thereby reducing the current to a very low level. Since loss in a line is equal to the resistance times the current squared, this lowering of current serves to virtually eliminate loss from transmission. Go back to your energy conversion textbook and look it up.
3. Last and most important, the idea of decentralized power production ignores one of the cornerstone concepts of economics: economies of scale. It is far cheaper to build one massive generator to power 10,000 households than to build 10,000 small generators to power 1 household each. This is the problem with the hydrogen storage system. You still must burn it in your own generator. The thermal efficiency of our coal and oil powered plants is very good, and costs of centralized energy production are much easier to control. Go back to your macroeconomics textbook and look up the chapter on economies of scale.
We could all also start making our own clothes and growing our own food too, in case the supply ever runs out. In fact, we could build our own computers, hand-soldering a few million transistors together..... But we dont. We don't because in modern civilized societies, people profit by the exchange of goods, something which would not be possible without economies of scale.
That's quite a "backup". Good thinking. (Score:4, Insightful)
A solar power system that functions around the clock and through extended loss of the power grid is every bit as complicated as this "half-baked" storage idea, and without something like hydrogen, it requires something like a battery array. Which is "quarter-baked" at best-- pitching a ton or two of big toxic batteries every few years is a lousy idea whether you're an environmental nut or just a normal person who hates large recurring costs.
Not so awesome... (Score:3, Insightful)
While hydrogen may burn cleanly the large oil and power corporations are expecting to use thier existing carbon monoxide (and sulfer dioxide) producing natural gas, fuel oil, and coal burning power plants to provide the electricity needed to separate the hydrogen, which will allow energy to be stored for late usage but not cut into thier profits earned from America's dependance on fossil fuels. Hydrogen energy storage is only clean if clean sources of energy are used to power the separation of hydrogen from water(such as solar, which IMHO is a good idea).
Natural gas fuel cells are a much better solution for distributed power generation. The infrastructure for providing natural gas is already existant in most urban areas and in many rural areas (such as in OH, western NY, and western PA) it is not unusual for homes to have thier own natural gas wells on the property. Natural gas can be produced from sewage [state.or.us] and animal waste [slashdot.org], and can also be tapped off of landfills. [wasteage.com] Fuel cells do not produce the carbon monoxide that is emitted with the incomplete burning of hydrocarbons, and are much more efficient at converting the contained energy into electricity.
As for the explosiveness of hydrogen, this is not much of a problem as hydrogen is lighter than air which allows hydrogen leaks to disperse quickly as long as they are in ventilated areas. Long chain hydrocarbon gasses (such as gasoline vapors, propane, and natural gas) are heavier than air, which allows them to pool in depressions (such as basements) and remain in one place ontil they mix sufficiently with the air to become explosive.