Prices of the electricity we use to charge

Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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Not so Tony , HICE engines are internal combustion engines with H fuel cells as well as generator type systems with H fuel cells.
Have you looked at the dreadful efficiency of hydrogen ICE vehicles? It is truly appalling and a huge waste of electrical energy if produced by electrolysis and worse if produced from cracking methane gas.

It takes 50 kwhrs of electrical energy to produce 1kg of so called 'green hydrogen' gas - perhaps produced partly by wind turbines and solar, but in this country over the last year consisting on average of 27% methane gas turbines.

That 1kg of hydrogen contains between 33 kilowatt hours of heat if you burn it. So immediately we have a substantial loss 15 kilowatt hours.

However - burning the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine will at best produce about 35% efficiency in shaft horse power - ballpark and generous figure there. So if we take the over-generous estimate of how much shaft horse power we get out of it we might see 10 or 11 shaft kilowatt hours produced by a hydrogen engine which took 50 kilowatt hours of electricity to make. Overall - about 20% efficiency or about a quarter of what we would have got if we had put the electricity into an electric motor.

Factor in that at the present time, most hydrogen - about 98% is made by cracking methane in another very inefficient process, the so called hydrogen economy is a grotesque fantasy in every way.

Hydrogen has a host of problems in storing it. It takes more energy to compress it and it escapes like Houdini from any vessel you try to keep it in.

It is almost certain that those hydrogen busses are a total gimmic using hydrogen that is made out of methane gas. It wold be a FAR FAR better thing ti just run those busses on methane. There would be far less co2 produced if you did that. 98% of hydrogen available today is made out of methane in an inefficient carbon wasting process. The hydrogen is cracked from methane with super heated steam at very high pressures. The pressure and the steam use power extracted from the methane and the carbon left over from the whole process escapes to the atmosphere.

Burning compressed methane would have a far lower carbon footprint. Methane gas has 4 hydrogen atoms and one carbon one. Burn it directly in your bus engine.

Steam methane reforming plant producing hydrogen. Guess what comes out of those chimneys.....

61487
 
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Nealh

Esteemed Pedelecer
Aug 7, 2014
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Efficiency I don't know , it is the cost currently that would make any ones eyes water. Then again EV's make my eyes water with their costs and to my eyes impraticle designs in a lot of cases.

The Wright H buses we have here can do 600 miles on a fill up which takes about 8- 10 minutes far better then the equivalent EV bus with only a 200 mile range.

Tbh no one has got on board (car wise) with major production of them , only two H cars are offered in the UK . One a Toyota and the other a Hunday, filling stations are equally as scarce.
The other issue is cost of producing green H as compared to dirty grey H.
Mean while industry is happy to cause enviromental destruction every where to ine the precious minerals.
 

Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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In China, and I guess also in some other countries, buses are recharged by induction loops buried under their parking slot at the end of the line. It only takes a few (about 10) minutes. They stop for their drivers to have a rest while being recharged so they don't seem to be interrupted.
 
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flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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The Wright H buses we have here can do 600 miles on a fill up which takes about 8- 10 minutes far better then the equivalent EV bus with only a 200 mile range.
In London we restrict our use of hydrogen fuel cell buses to the very few unavoidable longer routes. Re-planning routes had enabled our battery buses to cope with almost any need.

The hydrogen for London's buses is produced at Air Liquide's plant in Runcorn, which uses waste hydrogen as a by-product from an industrial chlor-alkali plant.
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soundwave

Esteemed Pedelecer
May 23, 2015
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ill have the psu out of one of those :p
 

lenny

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May 3, 2023
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