Yeah, the key to any practical use of hydrogen is a massive massive infrastructure buildout. Fundamentally, a hydrogen infrastructure is competing with the power grid, which has a century of investment and already exists.
It competes with battery technology/economics, which is in roughly a 10% year on year improvement curve, a curve that will have to flatten at some point but has been doing 10% for better than a decade and with 140 wh/kg sodium ion / 200 wh/kg LFP / emerging solid state + lithium sulfur techs will probably continue.
So if hydrogen is claiming:
- IF we resolve the research barriers and core engineering to a basic state
- IF we invest billions/trillions in infrastructure
- IF that is built in 10 years (which would be a miraculous human achievement)
... THEN we ... might ... in theory ... be price competitive with the current day grid + batteries.
OK, what about a world where batteries are half or a third of the cost in 10 years, which is what the long term trends suggest with year-on-year improvements?
All the nuclear and hydrogen stories are being hyped hard over the last couple years, because those behind those technologies aren't stupid and see the curves in alternative energy and storage and EVs: economic armageddon at an industry wide level for the nuclear, oil/gas, and others.
The coal industry was a preview for their industries. They know it's a losing battle, but like other fading industries, the execs hold on tooth and nail to get their bonuses/retirement/payouts. The organizations have real economic inertia, and investing in things that slow down the transition allows the companies to make more money longer.
At least the economics of wind/solar/batteries are working so strongly in favor of a transition. Otherwise write the requiem for the human race.
The power grid will never be able to compete with hydrogen (or other liquid fuels). The laws of physics simply aren't on the side of using the electric grid for fueling.
Imagine a truck stop where you can have 10-15 semi trucks filling up 300 gallon tanks every 5 minutes. We're talking megawatt-hours of energy to every roadside fuel station. And there are in excess of 10 million semi-trucks and over 40,000 truck stops in the USA. This isn't even getting into more demanding applications, like aviation, where the energy demands are an order of magnitude greater (The electrical equivalent of fueling a single Boeing 747 with 65,000 gallons of JET-A in under an hour is ludicrous)
Unless you build hundreds of nuclear reactors, invent superconducting power lines, come up with battery technology that's 100 years in the future, or tell everyone that the 21st century is cancelled, this is all impossible for the grid. At least on paper, hydrogen can solve this problem if we can figure out how to generate, store and transport it properly.
1) electric trucks are more efficient than ICE trucks, so cut your overall energy costs by 2/3 to 3/4.
2) beauty with electric drivetrains is that virtually ANY sort of power generation. If we're talking a bunch of recharge sites in the midwest, you'll power them with windmills/solar that are right next door. In the south and southwest, solar farms right next door. Or some hydroelectric. Or some geothermal. You don't need to rely on the grid for everything.
3) tractor trailers can use a swappable battery system easily. You already see it in action when you see UPS trucks pulling multiple trailers. You have a trailer that's a battery (or a generator if you can figure out carbon neutral generation or hydrogen in god knows when), but you DON'T need to fast-charge everything. So a tractor trailer pulls in, unhitches spent battery trailer, and hitches up and plugs in a pre-charged one. The trailer battery can also be shaped to function like an aerodynamic rear foil to increase the overall efficiency, and maybe even function as a stabilizing rear drive motor. Better battery tech comes in? You don't need to worry about replacing the batteries in the tractor, you just phase in and out the trailer batteries.
4) aviation will be on synthfuels for long-haul trips for the foreseeable future, even I will admit that. But short hop commuter flights will absolutely be electrified, the "fuel cost" savings will guarantee that, especially once carbon taxes finally are enacted.
Hydrogen is only 25% efficient so using hydrogen dramatically increases demand on the electric grid, we would need an extra 600 GW of production for hydrogen trucks over EV’s.
Anyway, for the numbers those 40,000 truck stops aren’t all filling up 15 semi trucks at a time. Also, a topical refueling stop takes 20-30 minutes.
A truck can generally travel around 2,100 miles on a full tank of gas. On average per day your looking at less than 500 kWh per truck. Gasoline contains more energy but engines are not very efficient and not every truck is traveling 11 hours at highway speed per day.
Call it ~500 kWh/24 hours and the average load is 21kW * 10 million trucks = 210 GW or roughly 6MW per truck stop, but electrified roads are far more efficient and remove the need for truck stops or excessive batteries.
Either way we are talking about is a lot of power but hydrogen makes this much much worse.
We solved this problem a century ago for the railways. Build trolley-style wires over the interstates. Your vehicle is directly grid-powered while on the main roads, potentially even trickle-charging, and only needs to go battery for the last few miles.
This could also potentially increase order and predictability on the roads-- vehicles have to stay in lane and move only at designated turning points in order to maximize use of the grid supply. Autonomous vehicles could use the wires as an effective feeler to make sure they're staying on a defined road.
Yes, it technically doesn't fix aviation, but if we can avoid solving an already solved problem, maybe it frees up some better minds to look at that. TBH, I could imagine a lot of aviation being displaced by better high-speed rail options, hopefully getting to the point where it's less of a critical emissions concern.
>The electrical equivalent of fueling a single Boeing 747 with 65,000 gallons of JET-A in under an hour is ludicrous
You're forgetting that internal combustion engines waste most of the energy in fuel as heat. Car/truck engines are about 35% efficient at the best. I'm not sure what it is for airplanes, but turbines are well-known to be horribly inefficient, much much worse than piston engines; they're only used in airplanes because the power-to-weight ratio is so much better.
It competes with battery technology/economics, which is in roughly a 10% year on year improvement curve, a curve that will have to flatten at some point but has been doing 10% for better than a decade and with 140 wh/kg sodium ion / 200 wh/kg LFP / emerging solid state + lithium sulfur techs will probably continue.
So if hydrogen is claiming:
- IF we resolve the research barriers and core engineering to a basic state - IF we invest billions/trillions in infrastructure - IF that is built in 10 years (which would be a miraculous human achievement)
... THEN we ... might ... in theory ... be price competitive with the current day grid + batteries.
OK, what about a world where batteries are half or a third of the cost in 10 years, which is what the long term trends suggest with year-on-year improvements?
All the nuclear and hydrogen stories are being hyped hard over the last couple years, because those behind those technologies aren't stupid and see the curves in alternative energy and storage and EVs: economic armageddon at an industry wide level for the nuclear, oil/gas, and others.
The coal industry was a preview for their industries. They know it's a losing battle, but like other fading industries, the execs hold on tooth and nail to get their bonuses/retirement/payouts. The organizations have real economic inertia, and investing in things that slow down the transition allows the companies to make more money longer.
At least the economics of wind/solar/batteries are working so strongly in favor of a transition. Otherwise write the requiem for the human race.