Pretty easy to avoid peak time with a timer, assuming it doesn' take all night to charge.deadduck wrote:slow wing wrote:Makes sense, Guy, for everyone with a hydrogen refilling station in their garage.
Oh yeah, and if they can also bring down the price of the fuel cells by a large factor. And make them more durable and reliable.
Ah, I forgot, and when they have a network of hydrogen refilling stations on the highway.
And perhaps also if there was a practical way to make hydrogen cheaply and in a sustainable way.
Also, if it wasn't so difficult to store the leaky stuff in a portable high-pressure container.
Maybe one or two teething issues with that technology then. If only there was a way, instead of using a fuel cell to create electricity, to store the electricity and use it directly...
Have you thought about the consequences to the grid of everyone coming home from work at 5 pm and plugging in their cars to charge? Or everyone arriving at work at 8:30 am and plugging in their cars? There are already usage peaks between 5 and 9 pm and you would expect those to at least double. Where does that power come from?
That may be the failing of electric vehicles, it will require cooperation with investment in the grid capacity specifically for for those peak charge times. It's the kind of investment that will preclude the mainstream use of electric cars, but no one is going to invest that money unless electric cars become mainstream. Catch-22, someone is going to have to risk a white elephant.
As for making hydrogen, it's cheap and sustainable already if you just whack an electrolysis plant onto the back of a solar power plant. I still think it's a bit of a goose chase anyhow, and would rather see some exploration of the potential of the methanol fuel cell.
As for hydrogen it will always be at least twice as expensive as the energy equivalent in electricity.
The reason is simply that to get hydrogen to your tank, you first have to split it losing about half of the energy in the process.
Then if you put it in a fuel cell you lose anoher half converting it back to electricity to drive the motor.
If instead you burn it in an ICE or a gas turbine you lose even more han half the energy before it gets to the wheels.
If instead you take your solar power and put it on the grid, charge a battery, he draw current from the battery to drive the wheels you lose about 20% in the charge discharge cycle.
In short you get more than twice as many kms per solar power station with electric than you do with hydrogen fuel cell.
