Honda bringing solar hydrogen fuel cell vehicles home
Honda's latest solar hydrogen stationFor years now Honda has been very focused on making fuel cell vehicles a cost-effective reality. As the cars have gotten cheaper and closer to theoretical scale, the main issue has become hydrogen.
Where is the hydrogen highway?
As one path to that ends, Honda has been developing solar to hydrogen stations, and the latest prototype has become small enough to fit in a garage while also becoming cheaper. Currently, Honda is testing the system in California, and the automaker intends to use the station to help "advance the wider use of fuel-cell electric vehicles by consumers," according to InsideLine.
Labels: fuel cells
posted by Dahcredyns at
10:42 AM
15 Comments:
eh... this is one of the WTF articles.
If you can produce electricity from solar to then run a machine to crack H2 out of H20 then why do the last step?
why not just use the electricity and a battery?
or.. I'll be more charitable... of the two options.. which is the most cost-effective?
harder question - what's the rationale in Honda talking about this if it does not yet have a practical solution?
PR? Green Credentials? Impress their competitors?
????
it's obviously a very complicated issue, but it's not easy to cost-effectively, nor terribly green, to store electricity. thus, one day, many believe it will be far greener and economical to store electricity and transport electricity as hydrogen.
certainly for short range and small vehicles, EVs will offer a strong economic case, but if you're talking 300 miles range, larger vehicles, etc., most automakers seem to believe that fuel cell hybrids will eventually be cleaner and cheaper than EVs in many applications.
ultimately, i think honda is taking this path because the truly believe it's the right path. likewise, there is very interesting hydrogen research coming out of japanese academia which some assume will lead to hydrogen production that will end up being very cheap.
If hydrogen ends up cheaper to produce than electricity then we've solved the blasting-off-of-mountaintops-for-plug-in-hybrids issue as well as our foreign dependence problem and in fact, worldwide starvation.... because energy is fundamental to modern life.
but there are some very fundamental issues with the density of hydrogen... in terms of portability if not mistaken.
Wouldn't it take a Van-sized tank to give a car a normal range from a hydrogen fuel ?
I thought that the main use of hydrogen fuel would be for heavily-polluted urban areas where it would be valued for it'z zero pollution behavior
however.. I never say never.. on these things...
seems like every year.. they find something they previously thought was wrong... and needs to be rethought.
I've seen a few reference to these solar powered stations that produce hydrogen.
I think this is the answer to the hydrogen highway.
Commercial-grade solar hydrogen stations combined with residential solar hydrogen stations can help us to grow the availibility hydrogen without the need for an infrastructue to transport that hydrogen.
It all comes down to economics though.....Just like EV's and hybrids, if gasoline is cheaper that's what Americans will buy.
So the big question is......What is the cost for these hydrogen generating stations?
think about this now.
if you could put one of these in your home - couldn't you just build up a reserve tank of hydrogen and use it to produce electricity for your home AND your car and not need to buy electricity from the power company anymore?
see.. they're combining TWO types of energy...
for instance, could you not have a hydrogen generator than ran off the power grid instead of solar?
... Couldn't the power companies.. produce hydrogen with their spare power...save it.. then use it when the demand spikes instead of having to fire up more plants burning other conventional fuels?
this has the "feel" of one of those perpetual motion machines, no?
or maybe I'm just not seeing it.
This post has been removed by the author.
Larry,
I think there is a negative gain using hydrogen to power your house as it takes electricity to make hydrogen. You would have more energy if you took the solar electricity and applied it directly to your home and to the grid.
I like your other idea about building up a reserve of hydrogen..... If your daily production of hydrogen is more than your daily consumption, then your daily fuel costs will be zero dollars.... An average commuter uses about $5.00 of gasoline per day at today's prices....
Nice article.
Honda announced its new Home Energy Station IV that uses steam reforming of natural gas to derive hydrogen from both the steam and natural gas in equal parts. The Home Energy Station IV is 75-percent smaller than older units and provides hydrogen for a car as well as heat and electricity for the home.
thanks or the additional info.
well.. from my understanding, this process generates significant greenhouse gases - no?
AND it uses significant energy to "crack" the hydrogen from the natural gas to boot.
here's the problem..
we have all of these things being promoted as "green" as if "green" was one thing.... that was less polluting AND more fuel efficient and the distinction is not made often.
Hydrogen has been promoted as a clean fuel - appropriate for use in urbanized areas with air quality issues from ICE engines.
But then.. folks have jumped on the hydrogen bandwagon implying that we could have a hydrogen fleet of vehicles - nationwide - with a nationwide network of stations - similar to gas stations.
We do need to look for better answers but the problem is this kind of thing promotes what I view as "energy illiteracy".
It promotes the idea that "somehow" technology will convert us from a petroleum-based energy nation to a "green" nation while virtually ignoring the basic laws of energy.
So we get this idea about hydrogen being generated by solar "reforming" ....
but folks.. if this were true... if we could generate hydrogen from solar... our entire energy situation would be solved....
right?
so what is keeping it back?
the laws of nature - folks.
for hydrogen - a simple thing would help people understand how far away we are from being able to cost-effectively do what Honda is promoting.. something that Honda does not provide
.. and that is....
for each killowatt of electricity used how much equivalent killowatt of power would it yield in hydrogen fuel?
is it 2 to 1 ... 1.5 to 1. or 10 to 1?
second.. what was the ratio 10, 20 years ago and what are the immediate term prospects of a better ratio?
third - when do scientists think we'll hit the threshold of 1 to 1 or better?
What Honda is doing is essentially giving fanciful propaganda to a public that is for the most part illiterate about energy basics...
.. and then this causes a bunch of folks to become "impatient" that the government is not converting to GREEN when it ought to be ....
In the meantime.. everyone continues to use energy...without conserving it .. because the think that major breakthroughs are "just around the corner" .. and we'll be living in a world where a home-based hydrogen "pump" will power our cars....
that's my frustration.. with Honda and others who keep yammering on and on about the "hydrogen" economy that is "right around the corner".
I think this mindset just further muddies the water and actually promotes what I call energy illiteracy.. and yes I count myself in that group - in part because the actual facts are competing with fanciful improbabilities and we often do not understand enough to know which is which.
... so.. I'll quiet down now and let others weigh in here and tell me where I've got this wrong.
Larry,
Thanks for the reminder about hydrogen.
I went back and view "who killed the electric car" and reviewed the section about the "5 miracles of hydrogen" One or two of these 5 might be a little skewed, but 2 or 3 of these miracles listed are spot on....
Here they are again....
1) Each car cost is too expensive. (The platinum in the Proton Exchange Membrane is what makes them expensive)
2) Storage is a major problem. No material known to man can store enough hydrogen on board the vehicle to give people the range they are accustomed to.
3) The hydrogen fuel is very expensive. It takes 4 times as much energy to produce hydrogen for fuel cells if you electrolyze it from water as it does to charge plain old lead-acid batteries. Even hydrogen from natural gas (98% of hydrogen is made from steam reformed methane, a fossil fuel that is predicted to diminish in supply in this current decade by David Hughes of the Canadian Geological Survey) costs 1.5 more than gasoline.
4) No fueling infrastructure exists. Estimates are that 20,000 hydrogen fueling stations would have to be built for wider adoption. Car buyers won't buy the HFC cars without the fueling stations. The stations won't be built without the fleet of cars to be fueled.
5) Hope that competitors don't get better and wipe out your market. Plug-in hybrids are poised to enter the market by 2010 which would work off the existing electrical grid and gasoline fueling stations. The cars are charged at home for a 40 mile all electric range and if, perchance, the gasoline engine kickes in if you are one of those outside the 80% of people in the US who commute greater than 40 miles per day round trip.
Larry,
There is no doubt that hydrogen is a long term solution, as is the electric car.
And your energy competence and confusion argument is a very good one. For instance, look at my post today on the Oxford Study.
The fact is there is no silver bullet on the horizon. There are still just niche solutions.
Today, for instance, perhaps we should skip the idea of EVs altogether and focus on simple hybrids and carbon fiber to make all vehicles lighter.
Then, if battery technology does achieve a breakthrough, we cal amp up EV production and convert all the old hybrids into plug-in hybrids.
That's basically what EVERY bit of research suggests is the pragmatic path forward.
Yet, outside of Toyota, and to some extent Honda, not one automaker has announced any serious uptick in hybrid production.
It's as if 100,000 Volts per year, or 100,000 Leafs per year is enough to greenwash away the fact that these 100,000 EVs per year are accomplishing almost nothing in terms of energy dependence or global warming.
It's all just marketing for the short and even into the middle term.
Also, I wouldn't use Who Killed the Electric Car as a barometer to fuel cells. That's like asking Republicans if Democrats are the better party. Those guys are a little too passionate about their cause. More objective studies are much more open to fuel cell possibilities.
I mean let's be honest. According to the research, if a battery technology beyond lithium-ion cannot be cost-effectively developed than EVs might achieve 10 or 20 percent market penetration in 20 years, but that's about it because of commodities issues.
Yes there are still greater issues with fuel cells and hydrogen today, compared to EVs, but perhaps not in 10 or 20 years.
Likewise, a small FCX can already achieve almost 250 miles. And, there have been fuel cell prototypes that not only use far less platinum, some experimental fuel cells don't use any platinum.
Ultimately, most automakers seem to believe the fuel cell vehicle can be made cost-effective today if they could sell 1 million fuel cell vehicles per year. Years ago, GM presented me with a lot of great technical data suggesting such a pathway.
The real nut is hydrogen. And at that time, GM claimed that you could build a hydrogen infrastructure - using natural gas reformation - around the 10 largest cities and it would lead to cost-effective fuel cell vehicles, including the fuel.
In my opinion, if the hydrogen revolution happens, i'd bet it happens as part of a larger system.
This isn't a good example, but think of the heat dumps in a solar system. Essentially, solar power creates a lot of wasted heat, a lot of wasted energy. What if that energy is captured and that's the 'extra' energy needed for electrolysis?
There is a lot of that kind of thinking going on at Honda - although that might be a very poor example.
Likewise, I've seen some case studies for how water desalination and hydrogen could complement each in a way that makes both cost-effective. They are pretty sketchy studies, but I believe if hydrogen ever becomes a reality, it will be on systemic level that is greater than the individual parts.
didn't mean to rain on the parade... too much
but ...for now.. "using less energy" is better than hoping for technology breakthroughs that save us from having to sacrifice.
but I have hopes also.
Only a few years ago.. we were told that ONLY STEM cells could be used for medical breakthroughs and life-saving therapies... and now.. fat cells can...
the technology that made hybrids possible - the melding of computers with multiple engines to seamlessly switch from one to the other.. that did not exist a decade or two ago - at least not in a form that was commercially dependable.
the breakthroughs will happen.. that's why the future is exciting.
i still think you made a great point.
nationally-speaking, we're not moving forward nearly as intelligently and as efficiently as possible.
in fact, sometimes it seems we're not thinking intelligently at all.
for instance, is 1 million plug-ins by 2015 an efficient use of resources?
the problem with plug-ins is based on current battery technology limitations, in particular their use of certain commodities. rushing to use these commodities isn't going to change that fact. it's not going to make them cheaper.
so, what are huge tax credits and cheap electricity rates - mostly for wealthy people - really accomplishing for the costs?
on the other hand, if you can get 10 hybrids on the road for every plug-in, wouldn't it be far better to have 10 million hybrids on the road by 2015 instead?
the battery technology is being pushed just as much. the auto industry is being forced to completely retool towards future technologies.
more important, if the battery breakthroughs do occur, all those 'old' hybrids can be converted into plug-ins.
on the contrary, if you put all those resources into 1/10 as many plug-ins, that means there are that many more guzzlers being produced in the interim, and the legacy effects of these guzzlers can last for a decade or two.
ultimately, our current path creates the perception of change without really achieving an effective change. worse, it guarantees legacy effects that are counter-productive to the change we are trying to achieve.
I saw an interview will Bill Gates where he was asked about alternative vehicles and alternative energy.
He was less than enthusiastic.
What he saw was that there are a lot of potential solutions being developed right now....
....but he warned us to be careful about investing in these solutions as "most of them are a dead end because they won't become profitable."
Post a Comment
<< Home