Originally Posted by
Keith Outten
I was told that hydrogen fuel can be produced at your home using one solar panel that would provide all of your home and transportation energy needs. The problem is political not physical. The government and big energy companies do not want us to have that capability. Sounds crazy I know but about ten years ago Honda was advertising a new car that came with a hydrogen generator that was capable of providing all the energy one home needed. Honda had a TV commercial but it ran for only a couple of days and the government shut it down. A bunch of guys where I worked were pretty excited about the concept and got pretty mad when it disappeared. Hydrogen gas flashed from a liquid would require a very substantial fuel tank that the government will never approve for the highways.
No matter what form it's in, it's all energy. It's highly unlikey that one solar panel could provide all your home and transporation energy needs. A solar panel can produce somewhere between 250 watts to 400 watts, and that's under ideal conditions (directly facing the sun and no clouds). Let's say an average of 300 watts, and 8 hours per day. That's 2.4kWhr.
Now, let's convert that to hydrogen. With electrolysis of water, the resulting hydrogen will have about 70% of the input energy, or about 1.7 kWhr. Then, you have to put it into a fuel cell and that's about 60% efficient, giving you 1kWhr. That's not much. Over a week, under ideal conditions you'd get 7kWhrs. Even if your electricity costs you $0.30 per kWhr, that's $2.10.
Then you have some issues when using hydrogen in a vehicle. One is the fuel tank. You have to compress the hydrogen to a very high pressure in order to get enough range (to be able to store enough hydrogen in your vehicle) and that means a heavy fuel tank and danger of rupture in an accident.
Also note that almost all hydrogen vehicles also have batteries in them. The reason is that the fuel cell used in the vehicle is usually based on normal cruising energy demand (for cost reasons). The battery is there to provide the extra energy needed when you accelerate or go up hill.
If you work out the cost of commercial hydrogen from electrolysis you will find that the energy cost per mile is a lot more than energy from a battery. I just do not see any way that hydrogen can compete with a family level battery vehicle. It might have a chance for large commercial vehicles where the size and weight of a battery is not acceptable.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.