California's Hydrogen Highway Adds Another Station 87
plover writes Scientific American notes that a new hydrogen refueling station has been added in Sacramento, bringing the state's total to ten. This was timed to coincide with Toyota's Japan release of their first commercially available fuel cell vehicle, the Mirai. Toyota is scheduled to start selling cars in Northern California next year.
Ten! Stations (Score:3, Funny)
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Yes, but when there were 10 gas stations, they were not competing with other fuel stations, other than perhaps horse feeding and care stations...
And frankly, over time, the car replaced the horse, for many reasons...
Changing fuel in a car doesn't change that it is still a car, there was a reason to put in gas stations, cars are improvements over horses. Another fuel type? Not so much...
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Well, if it really were "Ten!" stations that'd be 3 628 800 stations, which oughtta be about one for every household.
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immigration does that...
Re:I suppose this is a good thing... (Score:5, Informative)
Well to wheels, hydrogen is probably the most polluting fuel cycle imagined. At present like 95% of the hydrogen supply comes from fossil fuels, and end to end cycle efficiency is even lower than an average gas guzzling SUV.
Rather than trying to push this into passenger cars, working on hydrogen based long haul trucks and airliners makes a lot more sense. But even then the theorethical "green" benefits are not clear cut.
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I don't think t make sense in any way. The large carbon foot print and the fact it does nothing to wean us off of hydrocarbons makes t a bad idea. It makes more sense to burn natural gas. I cuts out middle man for lower costs and pollution. And a better developed infrastructure.
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Tax breaks, writeoffs, kickbacks, bribes, lobbying, etc.
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"Whee! We're releasing the CO2 somewhere else instead of from your tailpipe, so now our car is green!"
What a load of crap.
IMO, the only subsidies and tax breaks should be for true electric vehicles, because they are the only ones that can realistically be powered from non-CO2-emitting power sources. Everything else is just a workaround—a step in the wrong direction, purely in the name of expediency, solely because doing it right is expensive and challenging, and fuel cells are (relatively) cheap an
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im surprised theres so much hate for H2. its true that most hydrogen today is from NG. but you realize that if you run your EV in many parts of the east coast you're basically running on coal? that's much worse.
There are many H2 pathways that are from electrons, including green electron pathways. and there are other attractive ways of how hydrogen can be made from the grid without overwhelming it. you can make H2 when the grid load is low, using up renewable power that would otherwise not be used (eg wind p
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im surprised theres so much hate for H2. its true that most hydrogen today is from NG. but you realize that if you run your EV in many parts of the east coast you're basically running on coal? that's much worse.
Where do you think the energy for cracking the natgas into H2 comes from? Most of the energy for that is coming from coal! In short, H2 is made from coal and natgas. And we're fracking for the natgas. More natgas means more fracking, more H2 means more natgas, ENVIROFAIL.
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youre speaking from ignorance and youre boring me. evs will not work at scale. our aging infrastructure cant handle it. h2 can be made centrally and can be made during daily lulls when the renewables are idled due to low demand. h2 also avoids the issue of peak demand charges which can raise the price of electricity 100x.
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youre speaking from ignorance and youre boring me.
Explain what I said was wrong.
h2 can be made centrally and can be made during daily lulls when the renewables are idled due to low demand.
Not cost-effectively. The efficiency of electrolytic production of hydrogen is shit.
h2 also avoids the issue of peak demand charges which can raise the price of electricity 100x.
It does what? It's horribly inefficient, it will increase our power requirements, so no, no it doesn't. If EVs aren't viable then H2 is even less so. It's also a false dichotomy because we can make biofuels, and the reasons we aren't are not technical there either. They're about greed and political will.
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research power to gas programs. when electricity demand is at a low, they actually take wind farms offline. this is missed green electrons. you use these green electrons to make H2 at electrolisys faciilities. then you can pump h2 into the ng pipeline for green ng, store it and run it through a PEM stack later for peak electricity needs, or use it for H2. it's cost effective with zero GHGs, which is why companies in germany, canada, and US are doing it right now.
also research the "duck curve" and peak deman
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with an EV, you use electricity when you plug in to charge,
No. You use electricity when you charge. Modern EVs permit you to decide when that happens. So you use the power at night, when the demand is low. And much of the point of "smart metering" is that you'll eventually be able to decide to charge when power is cheap. EVs which don't have enough range to be charged at night are a problem, sure. But it won't be long before we don't make those any more — substantially before there's sufficient hydrogen fueling infrastructure for anyone to consider buying a c
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and what about your dream of fast charger networks? those charge when you plug in, which is the point. you're going to drive to a fast charger then hang out for 5 hours then charge? no, you'll charge when you need it. get a clue.
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and what about your dream of fast charger networks?
That dream is coupled to the dream of additional grid storage.
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Tesla is addressing the "duck curve" by installing grid storage at their charging locations in order to even out the power draw. Even with hydrogen storage, producing hydrogen by cracking water is horribly inefficient and will require four power plants for every power plant needed to charge an EV.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/... [thenewatlantis.com]
Hydrogen just makes no sense.
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I have time of use metering for my power and have a separate meter for charging my Tesla. Most EVs allow you to set what time charging begins and I have mine set at 11:05pm when the rates are the lowest. As for peak demand for rapid charging, Tesla is addressing this by adding grid storage at their charging sites to even out the load.
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Which is already happening. Tesla is in the process of installing grid storage at their superchargers.
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it makes sense if youcan get a fully-functional fuel cell car vs. a hobbled limited-use battery car. show me one car outside of a $90k tesla that is not a hobbled 80 mile range putt putt car.
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Show me a worthwhile fuel cell car? The pace of battery progress is quite high. The cost are dropping rapidly and the capacity is increasing while charging times are dropping. Right now any fuel cell car is very heavily subsidized. They will never sell given that the cost of hydrogen will always be significantly higher than gasoline while being less green to boot. Right now a decent hybrid will release less CO2 per mile than any hydrogen fuel cell car and there's not a lot of room for improvement. Making hy
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Which is already happening. Tesla is in the process of installing grid storage at their superchargers.
Yeah, note there was no complaint for that. It's hard to complain about people adding grid storage, which we desperately need anyway. The thing is, upgrading the grid and using more EVs means less trucks driving around delivering fuel, and even with our mostly-not-HVDC system we only lose about 5% in transmission in the USA and once the system is built it has few externalities, unlike OTR trucking which produces a lot of CO2 and does most of the road damage.
I continue to [casually] promote rail-based soluti
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Show me a worthwhile fuel cell car?
Hyundai has a new FC car out that I can lease today. The Toyota Mirai is coming soon. show me a worthwhile EV car that's not a $90k space ship.
They will never sell given that the cost of hydrogen will always be significantly higher than gasoline while being less green to boot
costs are on track to drop below gasoline on a per-mile basis. There are many H2 pathways that are very green and these are being scaled up rapidly. Also remember that FC cars are much more efficient than gasoline cars, so any metric has to be on a per-mile basis.
Making hydrogen from water is and always will be cost prohibitive due to the enormous amount of electricity required no matter the catalyst and fuel cell efficiency in a vehicle is maybe at best 60% efficient. Hell, it takes 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen just to compress it to 5000PSI.
depends where you are. in the PNW electricity prices are 3.5 cents / kwh. if you're smart you can play al
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Show me a worthwhile fuel cell car?
Try driving any of those cars outside of the few hydrogen filling stations. Oh wait, you can't. By the end of next year only a few cities will be linked up by hydrogen filling stations. I can drive my Tesla from San Diego to Vancouver today, or across the country. By the end of next year most of the nation will be covered by rapid chargers where only a few major cities will be covered by hydrogen. I can also charge any place there's an outlet or at most RV parks if need be. Most of my charging happens at ho
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today I can drive my FC car from Tijuana to Oregon. soon it will be no problem to go to BC. and I can do so significantly faster than your "fast charger". One thing that you're forgetting about FC technology is while you have a hard on for your space ship car other nations are investing significantly in H2 and see it as having a strong future. Japan is all in on H2. the countries that are the most aggressive about GHG emissions are choosing H2 as their pathway to sustainability. you should ask your self, wh
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According to this site [thenewatlantis.com] converting from methane to hydrogen is around 70% efficient. You then lose another 20% of your efficiency compressing the hydrogen to 5000PSI. When you calculate the well to wheel efficiency you're better off with a hybrid car rather than a fuel cell car.
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Then you more than double the mpg-equiv. you gotta look at per-mile metrics.
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Of course, I think most EVs are sold on the west coast, so that's probably a moot point. Besides, with EVs, you at least have the option of using clean energy (and even the ability to provide that energy yourself). With hydrogen, a truly green option doesn't even exist unless you use a grossly inef
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all these arguments are in circles. why would people on /. be against new technology? heck, people here root for space elevators. let's see what engineers can do and let the market decide.
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Hydrogen lobby is anything but letting the market decide. Transportation is actually kind of tricky to leave to the market as transportation requires large infrastructure investments. Such as distributing gas, diesel, laying down train tracks, installing charging stations and so on.
Governments will inevitably meddle, and meddle they will. Corn ethanol was/is a perfect example of government meddling gone wrong. Hydrogen is another disaster waiting in the winds.
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I suppose the EV lobby is any better?
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Re:I suppose this is a good thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most hydrogen comes from natural gas (with lousy conversion efficiency. If you get your hydrogen from electricity, it has even worse efficiency. It uses about four times the electricity to make hydrogen and then convert it back to electricity in your "fool cell" vehicle as just putting the electricity in your vehicle and bypassing the whole hydrogen part.
Plus, electricity is everywhere, literally everywhere. Anyone can just plug in at home and work, etc. With hydrogen, you have only ten places to refuel in California... not going very far.
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I think it's becoming increasingly clear that electric is a better choice. But Japan (both the government and industry) went pretty heavily into investing in fuel-cell tech some decades ago, when it was less clear which tech would win. And they don't seem willing to concede quite yet that electric cars now clearly are going to beat fuel-cell cars.
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Also take into account that the hydrogen is produced as one step of the process for making ammonia for fertilizer. One might argue that you are in effect burning fertilizer.
Re: I suppose this is a good thing... (Score:2)
It probably makes some sense for vehicles that are only used in big cities, since it moves the pollution.
London has had a few hydrogen buses for a few years now, but I don't think there are plans to develop them beyond a trial fleet.
An electric bus (all batteries) Also exists, but isn't yet practical.
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If you're only used in big cities you're better off just going pure electric. The efficiency is much greater, the vehicle cost is lower and it's far more convenient to charge up at night than to have to wait in line at a hydrogen filling station.
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If you're only used in big cities you're better off just going pure electric. The efficiency is much greater, the vehicle cost is lower and it's far more convenient to charge up at night than to have to wait in line at a hydrogen filling station.
The bus depot will have it's own diesel (or hydrogen) pump, so it's probably only a small saving. In a major city with a significant electric night bus service they'd probably need rapid charging points instead.
London has six [tfl.gov.uk] electric buses on various trials. I saw a video clip about them -- there were so many batteries they'd taken up the whole back of the bus, and obscured the read windscreen. That might not be the newest ones though.
Trolley buses are a cheap solution, still used widely in the ex-Sovie
10 whole stations! Woo woo! (Score:2, Funny)
Oh boy! So, at this rate, someone would be able to drive coast to coast by...oh...3025?
Just in time for the 4th Succession War!
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Just in time for the 4th Succession War!
Haven't we had quite a few more than that [wikipedia.org] already?
In a word? Nope. [wikipedia.org]
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Just in time for the 4th Succession War!
Nothing succeeds like excess!
Toyota's mirai (Score:5, Informative)
Mirai means (far) future in japanese, as opposed to shourai, which means near future.
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Thanks for assuming I'm white you racist piece of shit.
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You're missing out on internet culture. Weeaboo applies to both white lovers of Japanese culture as much as it does to the Japanese, themselves.
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In case anyone else is behind on this (Score:5, Informative)
Cost: $57,000 (before taxes and rebates)
0-60: 9 seconds
Range: 300 miles
It's a hybird, so it also has a battery pack (like the Prius)
You have to dump the resulting water
At the moment, most hydrogen is generated using fossil fuels (much like electricity), so it is only one of a two-part process if we wish to stop releasing CO2.
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You have to dump the resulting water
I assumed you meant that it was contaminated or something, and wasn't safe just to vent from the car, but it seems that...
The Mirai has a button labeled H2O that opens a gate at the rear, dumping the water vapor that forms from the hydrogen-oxygen reaction in the fuel cell.
Is this really not something they could automate?
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I suspect more /dotlings would fantasize about being a Bond supervillain than double oh himself.
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Hyundai is also piloting a project as well - though you lease the vehicle because they're only doing it in a few places where there are stations. I think the lease (which is fairly price at
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Though - why is there a water dump valve? I mean, since it comes out as steam, why not just have a tailpipe that emits steam? Or just let it drip on the ground like a car A/C.
I really wonder that too.
Only 118,746 ... (Score:3)
The USA had 118,756 filling stations (gas stations) in 2007 according to the Census
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Not quite ready for prime time.
Drivers will likely have to take a slight detour to reach the station, which is in an industrial section of West Sacramento, next to a cement factory that is currently being demolished.
The station was originally planned at a Shell station 2.5 miles away in a much busier section of town, but building codes required setbacks too wide to fit the hydrogen infrastructure within the station.
Re: Only 118,746 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hydrogen, from generation to storage to use, is a bad, inconvenient, and very expensive idea.
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And yet, most car makers and oil companies want to push H2 [energy.gov]
while Musk continues to push plain old electricity. [energy.gov]
I wonder who is likely to win considering that in another 3 years, the Tesla model 3 will costs around 35K and they will be making 250K cars / year? That will put them in ~ top 25 car makers.
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You can probably mix kerosene down with motor oil and burn it in an IDI diesel. You can certainly mix motor oil up with gasoline and then burn that. You can also burn E95, yeah that's right, 95% alcohol and 5% gasoline. It takes high compression and a turbo, but it can be done. Again, it should run in the old IDIs.
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Hydrogen will lose big time. There is just no way to make hydrogen cost competitive with gasoline. If you're producing hydrogen from methane you're hydrogen powered car will release more CO2 per mile than a good hybrid. Hydrogen production and filling stations are not cheap and will always be far more costly than a gasoline station, especially with all of the safety requirements. As it is, the local hydrogen filling station in my county used for filling buses already has had one hydrogen fire.
Cracking water
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H2 is a disaster. BUT, if oil companies, along with all of the top 10 major car companies push it, it is POSSIBLE for them to win.
Now, with that said, I think that when Tesla releases Gen 3, I believe that it is all over. I think that the majority of buyers will INSIST on cars to be built like a tesla. And sales will slide for the top 10 companies.
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It's not just Tesla with their gen 3. Nissan and Audi are also planning 200+ mile EVs and Nissan is looking at keeping the costs down as well. GM, Ford and BMW aren't sitting still either. It's just a matter of the battery prices to continue their downward trend in cost and upward trends in capacity and performance. The writing is on the wall for fuel cell vehicles and has been for a while. Tesla's gigafactory alone should drop their battery prices by at least 30%.
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That is why Gen 3 is so very important. When it comes out at say 35K and the owners have access to the Super Chargers AND Tesla is building out the new battery exchange mechanism, well, at that point, I think that the FCs makers
Die Hydrogen (Score:1)
Unless they are making EVs with hydrogen range extenders to be able to drive between cities, it makes no sense.
They are spending way too much money on Hydrogen, and the fuel is expensive compared to electricity. They could have built a lot more DC fast chargers and level 2 chargers around the state and nation for the price they are spending to roll out hydrogen to a very few number of drivers.
Now, if gasoline was running out in 50 years like we thought it was going to be before tar sands and fracking, alon
Spent 100 million on what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hydrogen stations in California have had a choppy rollout. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) first created the "hydrogen highway" concept in 2004 by executive order and budgeted $15 million for hydrogen demonstration projects, stations and buses through 2008. Schwarzenegger increased spending in 2007, signing A.B. 118, which provided roughly $90 million for hydrogen through this year. A bill that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed last year, A.B. 8, reformed the funding process, allocating $20 million per year through 2023 or until 100 stations are built.
So CA has spent $100 million so far, and all we have are 10 stations? Where did all the money go?
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Most of the first $15m went towards R&D and custom manufacturing costs for some tech demos, like a hydrogen-powered bus. That's about what I'd expect that to cost, given fully-loaded engineering salaries (~$200-300k/yr after overhead) and how expensive it is to build one-off things. Might not have been worth building in the first place, though.
Hurray for competing standards of nonsense! (Score:3)
On the one side we have the entrenched and largely ubiquitous gasoline infrastructure trying to keep electricity from becoming the dominant (good luck)... the recent upstart of hydrogen which requires you to rather carefully plan your commute... and LNG sitting there in the corner saying "Don't forget about me guys!"
It's like Verizon vs ATT on pay-per-view side and Sprint in it's own ring waiting for T-Mobile to arrive on PBS.
It's pretty easy to guess which is going to get the bigger numbers in terms of revenue.
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and LNG sitting there in the corner saying "Don't forget about me guys!"
There are already a hundred thousand LNG vehicles in the US alone.
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There are already a hundred thousand LNG vehicles in the US alone.
Yes, over many years... and there are over 250,000 plug in electric cars in the US already, just since 2008...
LNG is simply not going to happen, for many reasons... it probably should have, 20 years ago, but it just didn't...
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I agree for private cars. The situation with buses is less clear. If you have overhead wires, of course you can run an electric bus on the grid, but most cities don't want to put that in (possible exceptions for BRT lines, but even those seem to usually not be electrified). And with current battery tech, a battery-powered electric bus is challenging. So I think the current trend of LNG buses being slowly rolled out has at least some life in it.
Justice (Score:2)
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Perhaps laws should be put into effect that require gasoline and diesel engines in cars to have the same level of emissions as electric or hydrogen powered cars.
First, EVs and hydrogen cars would have to be viable. Modern gas-powered cars have pretty great emissions, anyway. The primary problem remains the sequestered-carbon fuels and feedstocks. EVs run on these, too, indirectly. If we upgraded the national grid substantially (it would cost a minuscule fraction of our military budget, and pay military dividends itself) then using renewables to charge up these EVs would be a viable solution.
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Now, how far can an EV go on the same emissions for a coal powered generating plant?
Good question. Make sure you account for the fissile materials which come out of the smokestack, which are not accounted for at all in these comparisons.
What if? (Score:1)
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In order for H2 cars to be truly green, you have to take water and split it and vent the oxygen. So you get the water back when you run your fuel cell car, and all is right again with the world.
Now all we need is a way of turning sunbeams into electricity, and we're all set. Of course, you could just charge up batteries instead, much more efficiently.
You can't burn coal to make the electricity without blowing your green cred. Using oil, natural gas, etc. to make hydrogen, is even worse because they're fossi