The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.
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Iceland has long been touted as a hydrogen economy pioneer. So it is quite shocking that electric vehicles -- both plug-in hybrids and pure battery electric cars -- crowded out hydrogen at a recent ReykjavÃk conference.
Iceland is blessed with abudant hydro-electric opportunities, and currently generates 6.5 TWh (Terawatt hours, which is equal to a million megawatt hours) per year, with the potential of 25-30 TWh per year. Geothermal currently generates 1.3 TWh per year, with a potential of 15 TWh per year over the next 100 years. Almost 100 percent of electricity in Iceland comes from these two sources. Geothermal energy is also used for space heating.
Yet 30 percent of total energy consumption still comes from oil, which is primarily used in transportation (cars and boats). Iceland seeks to get rid of its remaining fossil-fuel dependence, and for a while it was intensely focused on becoming one of the first hydrogen economies. It installed a hydrogen fuel station, and experimented with fuel-cell buses. Those buses are gone now, so it is appropriate to ask what was on Iceland's Driving Sustainably '08 conference agenda last week, concentrating on talks related to either electric or fuel cell vehicles.
The President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar GrÃmsson, opened the conference on Thursday monring with an address in which he said, "In the next five years or so we have to lay the fundamental groundwork of a comprehensive transformation of our traffic system, our transport, how we use the roads, how we move from one place to another, whether it is a household or a city or a country."
Just before Thursday's lunch, Yet-Ming Chiang, co-founder A123 Systems and MIT Professor of Materials Science & Engineering spoke on The Coming Electric Vehicle Revolution: Impact of Materials Advances on Automotive Batteries. During lunch, the program lists, "Test drive of selected EVs available outside." Immediately after lunch came two electric vehicle talks: Wind Generated Electricity, Second Generation Biofuels, and Better Place Denmark: Electric Cars and Recharging Infrastructure in Denmark, and Design & Potential of High Performance Electric Vehicles. Perhaps they were just trying to get the EVs out of the way? After coffee came CO2 Free Power and Plug-in Hybrids in the Nordic Countries, and The Next Generation Utility: Blending Energy Efficiency, Renewable Generation and Plug-in Vehicles to Eliminate Carbon Emissions. That was nearly a full day devoted to EVs, with hydrogen nowhere in sight. Surely day 2 must have been different.
Friday morning saw Present Status & Future Prospects of Electric Vehicles in China and The i MiEV Electric Car, given by Tetsuro Aikawa, Managing Director In Charge of Product Development at Mitsubishi Motors Corporation. Well, perhaps there were some hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at brunch? No, the program says again "Test drive of selected EVs."
Friday afternoon kicked off with a keynote, Better Place: A Mobility Operator Enabling EV Mass Adoption. Finally the hydrogen team gets up to the plate, with Shell presenting Shell Future Fuels Scenarios until 2020: Electricity & Hydrogen for Transport. Wait, even the hydrogen team is talking about electricity?
Did the afternoon then turn to hydrogen? Next up was Myths and truths about electric cars, followed by The Death & Resurrection of the Electric Car: Carmakers, Big Oil, Environment & Battery Developments, by Chris Paine, Director of Who Killed The Electric Car? After a panel discussion, Iceland's Össur Skarphéðinsson, Minister of Industry gave the last presentation Electricity for Transport in Iceland, which was followed by concluding remarks, and then "Free Time & EV testing."
With only Shell waving the hydrogen flag, it was a essentially a shutout. It appears that Iceland has cooled toward hydrogen, and is shifting attention to electric vehicles. The New York Times blogged Iceland's Future Could Be Electric, which reported:
"Hydrogen cars are not mass produced anywhere," said Teitur Torkelsson, managing partner of FTO Sustainable Solutions. "But a majority of car makers are announcing electric cars to be produced in the next four or five years, so it becomes a big part of our energy solutions." Even the country's 840-mile-long ring road could theoretically be covered with just 14 fast-charging stations. The Icelandic government is expected to ease the way for the E.V.'s by removing import taxes on them, as was recommended by a Finance Ministry working group.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:53 am
28 Sep 2008
Iceland moves to hydrogen power for ships, cars
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/23/2144774.htm ...
Hydrogen-fuelled rental cars
The hydrogen filling station's expansion coincided with the November arrival in Reykjavik of 10 specially adapted Toyota Priuses.
The cars, which charge their batteries with internal combustion engines that burn hydrogen instead of petrol, joined a Daimler Chrysler fuel-cell car imported in mid-2007.
Seven went to Icelandic companies for testing in their corporate fleets, while three went to the rental company Hertz, which now offers hydrogen-fuelled rentals.
Mr Skulason expects to see up to 20 hydrogen-powered cars on the road by year-end and twice that after two and a half years.
By 2030 or 2035, he believes most of Iceland's vehicles could be hydrogen-fuelled, although this depends on the arrival of affordable models.
So far, he says, customer feedback has been positive.
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:56 am
28 Sep 2008
http://hydrogendiscoveries.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/fast- ...
"A trip to the steaming, bubbling badlands of Iceland proves one thing: There is hope for hydrogen. "
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/124/hotbed.html?page= ...
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Bob Wallace Posted 4:10 am
28 Sep 2008
"Hydrogen cars are not mass produced anywhere," said Teitur Torkelsson, managing partner of FTO Sustainable Solutions. "But a majority of car makers are announcing electric cars to be produced in the next four or five years, so it becomes a big part of our energy solutions." Even the country's 840-mile-long ring road could theoretically be covered with just 14 fast-charging stations. The Icelandic government is expected to ease the way for the E.V.'s by removing import taxes on them, as was recommended by a Finance Ministry working group.
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Ever been to Iceland? Have any idea how small the county is? How few people live there?
I have. I walked from one edge to the other edge of the only large city one morning. Not a difficult stroll.
Understand the cost of small scale manufacturing?
300,000 people in the entire country. About 600 cars per 1,000 people.
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:33 am
28 Sep 2008
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071219103105 ...
-David Ahlport
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:09 pm
28 Sep 2008
Well, I'm willing to concede that Iceland may not be the best starting point for H2 cars.
Contrast that though with America...which already has the hydrogen generating infrastructure in place to fuel 110 million fuel cell cars...what is missing is the will to build the last mile to the pump. CA and now the Bos-New-Wash corridor has taken the lead, but OR and WA, for example, have nary a pump.
This image shows current generating facilities:
http://www.h2andyou.org/pdf/nightLights.pdf
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amazingdrx Posted 2:25 pm
28 Sep 2008
If renewable electric transportation takes over there, it might proviode enough of a mass market to spur mass production. Audi/VW are going for 100,000 A-1 plugin hybrids per year.
They won't be sold in the US. These more progressive couinytries will buy every one they can build, with no nasty trade restrictions threatened.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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fireofenergy Posted 2:33 pm
28 Sep 2008
Granted, we will have to be more efficient (lest we can afford a Tesla) but NiMH batteries should be on the list for mass cheapernization...
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Annimal Posted 3:25 pm
28 Sep 2008
Icelandic energy company Nýorka is planning to install a hydrogen engine in the whale watching ship Elding by summer 2008, which would be the first of its kind in the world.
If everything goes according to plan, Elding will sail out of Reykjavík harbor powered by hydrogen in June 2008 and test the new engine at sea, Fréttabladid supplement Markadurinn reports.
The design of the engine is Icelandic, but the generator is imported.
"We believe we are taking a new path and we hope knowledge in this field will become very valuable in the future," said Jón Björn Skúlason, managing director of Nýorka.
Skúlason said foreign media like the Discovery Channel had taken interest in the project.
"People envision environmentally friendly energy for boats instead of oil. [...] With the hydrogen generator there will be no pollution from the engine or vibration from the boat."
The total cost of the project is estimated at ISK 40 million (USD 622,000, EUR 460,000).
More about whales on my blog :
http://annimal.bloggsida.se/
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human power Posted 4:37 pm
28 Sep 2008
For the next twenty years at least, if you value life on Earth, you are anti-electric car. In fact, any real environmentalist would be anti-car.
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:41 pm
28 Sep 2008
For the next twenty years at least, if you value life on Earth, you are anti-electric car. In fact, any real environmentalist would be anti-car.
The current anti-hydrogen meme is "Hydrogen is not a fuel, it is a storage medium". Fine, but that is what batteries are. Electricity to recharge an electric car, or to generate hydrogen can be equally clean or dirty.
Batteries weigh a lot. An empty battery is as heavy as a full battery. Hydrogen packs more energy per unit volume than any other fuel.
Clean hydrogen -- generated by wind or solar and created from water -- can be just as easily added to the Hydrogen Grid as the Electric Grid.
Generators of any type can store energy as hydrogen more efficiently and in larger quantities more cheaply than in batteries. That means a standard -- even a coal generator -- can run at an optimized level, creating hydrogen to handled baseload.
Hydrogen can also be generated in a loosely coupled grid -- by homeowners. Who can use their own, or purchase it. And it doesn't necessarily require a connection such as a pipe or wire -- it can be delivered by truck.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:00 am
29 Sep 2008
The 750 watt battery electric/human powered hybrid exersize machine is the anti-wheelchair alternative.
Plugin battery electric transportation and renewable power go well together. Don't pin coal or the consumption mindset on plugin hybrids, bicycle, car, truck, or train.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Earl Killian Posted 1:33 am
29 Sep 2008
Don't believe me? Ask the US EPA. Go to http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm and click on 2002, then Toyota, and then RAV4 EV. Next click on Compare side-by-side, then 2002, then Toyota, then RAV4 2WD, and then Automatic. You can't get much more apples-to-apples than this. Note the efficiency difference: 112 MPG vs. 23 MPG (4.9×). Note the Wells-to-Wheels greenhouse gas emissions: 3.9 tons/year vs. 8.0 tons/year.
Please also see Figure 2-4 of http://www.epriweb.com/public/000000000001000349.pdf which makes clear that plug-ins beat hybrids.
So cut-out with the EV misinformation please.
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Earl Killian Posted 1:47 am
29 Sep 2008
When the facts are against you, make up something? Is that your strategy? The LHV of H2 per liter is nowhere near the best among fuels.
Clean hydrogen -- generated by wind or solar and created from water -- can be just as easily added to the Hydrogen Grid as the Electric Grid.
False. It takes 2-4× as much renewable energy to fuel a mile of fuel cell vehicle driving as it does to fuel a mile of electric driving. Thus it is 2-4× harder, at least, to create a clean hydrogen infrastructure.
Generators of any type can store energy as hydrogen more efficiently and in larger quantities more cheaply than in batteries. That means a standard -- even a coal generator -- can run at an optimized level, creating hydrogen to handled baseload.
False again. The 2-4× efficiency difference makes makes hydrogen 3-6× more costly per mile than electricity. The efficiency from power plant to battery output is about 80% efficient. The path from power plant to fuel cell output is about 20-39% efficient.
Hydrogen can also be generated in a loosely coupled grid -- by homeowners. Who can use their own, or purchase it. And it doesn't necessarily require a connection such as a pipe or wire -- it can be delivered by truck.
But it will take 2-4× as much power from the grid to fuel a mile as driving directly on grid electricity. It is grossly wasteful to use hydrogen.
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bugmenot Posted 2:29 am
29 Sep 2008
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Bob Wallace Posted 3:18 am
29 Sep 2008
Hydrogen seems to be your only issue and you push boundaries very hard to support your position.
Now, I'm sure you don't own the patent on the element hydrogen. What drives you so hard to support one single technology?
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:35 am
29 Sep 2008
Current hydrolysis technology yes, but with Nocera process, 100% conversion rate.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:38 am
29 Sep 2008
Hydrogen has more energy per unit mass than other fuels (61,100 BTUs per pound versus 20,900 BTUs per pound of gasoline).
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:43 am
29 Sep 2008
I want to reduce pollution as much as anyone.
Honda is leasing FCX vehicles right now.
I think in terms of components.
Getting H2 vehicles on the road right now, using existing infrastructure, is one way to if not reduce, than control pollution -- cars in cities would not pollute.
Second we can "drop" in components as they become available.
Imagine that Honda mass marketed the FCX, and that all cities added H2 pumps. It's easier to control backend pollution with sinks, scrubbers, than front-end.
The follow up is adding wind-solar H2 generators to the H-grid, reducing back end pollution.
The add on benefits are as I mentioned earlier -- a loosely coupled grid that allows for homes to be built semi-coupled to the national grid.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:48 am
29 Sep 2008
Hydrogen fuel cells are electric! They make electricity to run electric motors.
China right now has a fuel cell powered moped:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/08/18/chinese-company-b ...
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Earl Killian Posted 4:49 am
29 Sep 2008
FCVs will also cost us much more to drive. Twice the renewable electricity requires twice the land area, and so the cost must be at least twice per mile. However, this does not include the cost of the capital plant to produce hydrogen from renewable electricity. NREL estimates this adds $1.74 per kg of hydrogen. Using $0.07/kWhe as the power plant cost for renewable electricity, and adding in the $1.74/kg, gives 5.5 cents per mile, 3.2× times the BEV cost of 1.7 cents a mile. These calculations are based upon the cost of production; retail markup for hydrogen is likely to be higher than the retail markup for utility electricity, which would widen the gap further. Why should we burden our citizens and our economy with three times the cost?
Will improvements in technology make renewable FCVs more competitive? Basic physics suggests this is unlikely. FreedomCar's goals are already aggressive, at 78% efficiency (of HHV) for electricity to compressed hydrogen, and 60% (of LHV) for hydrogen back to electricity. The laws of thermodynamics do not allow such conversions of the form of energy to be perfectly efficient and in the case of hydrogen FCVs we are starting with liquid water and the exhaust of the vehicle is water vapor, and so the energy of vaporization (the difference between the LHV and HHV, 18% for H2) must come from somewhere. Electric vehicles are fundamentally more efficient.
It may be that we eventually invent a technology that directly produces hydrogen from sunlight, bypassing the generation of electricity. Such technology and would not be subject to the above analysis, but other considerations apply. First, the Stirling Energy dishes are 30% efficient at converting sunlight into electricity; to match BEV renewable electricity land area, such technologies would have to be 60% efficient at converting sunlight into hydrogen. Second, even if hydrogen is produced directly from sunlight and water, the most efficient use of it is to convert it to electricity in stationary fuel cells and ship it over the grid to BEVs. Stationary fuel cells (e.g. for distributed generation) will always be more efficient than mobile fuel cells, having the advantages of:
scale (MW vs. kW);
higher feasible operating temperature (e.g. solid oxide or molten carbonate cells);
weight insensitivity;
less cost sensitivity; and
the ability to recover energy lost as heat from steam turbines (as demonstrated in trials).
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Earl Killian Posted 5:17 am
29 Sep 2008
Your original claim was "Hydrogen packs more energy per unit volume than any other fuel." You said volume, not mass.
The energy density of the fuel storage hardly matters. Our family has 83,000 miles on a practical Battery Electric Vehicle that uses 61 Wh/kg batteries and gets approximately 230 Wh/mi motor to wheels despite the mass penalty. Modern LiNiCoAl batteries are as much as 175 Wh/kg, which only makes EVs more practical.
At 175 Wh/kg, 150 miles of range in a 200 Wh/mi sedan requires 171 kg of batteries. The FreedomCar goal for H2 storage is 2000 Wh/kg, so the same range would be 15kg. To this add the fuel cell mass (FreedomCar goal 325 W/kg, so 50 kW is 154 kg) and now you've got 169 kg for the FCV. It's a wash.
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Earl Killian Posted 5:23 am
29 Sep 2008
EVs do this better than FCVs because they are more efficient.
Honda is leasing FCX vehicles right now.
They are putting prototypes in the hands of drivers to get real-world data. Most indications are that these vehicles cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce. There are fuel cell lifetime and cost issues still to solve.
The follow up is adding wind-solar H2 generators to the H-grid, reducing back end pollution.
But if all the aggressive goals for electrolysis and fuel cells were realized, it would take twice as much wind and solar to power FCVs compared to BEVs. This makes them a poor choice.
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Bob Wallace Posted 6:42 am
29 Sep 2008
Generating hydrogen, using the methods at hand right now, will require 2+ more energy than using batteries. That means building 2+ times as many wind mills, solar panels, whatever.
Building and maintaining each of those devices creates some pollution, at least until we can get past using petroleum in manufacturing and transportation.
Additionally we're going to clutter up twice as much land with devices if we have to produce twice as much power.
Then we need to build more than just the extra generation facilities. We have to build transportation and distribution facilities. That's more pollution.
So hydrogen is net expensive compared to BEVs in terms of pollution.
I look at hydrogen as a good idea. But not the best idea. Going electric means even less pollution.
Hydrogen, to me, is a lot like biofuel. Food-based biofuel was an interesting alternative to petroleum until someone actually crunched the numbers.
We need to remember that market forces are almost certainly going to determine our choice and right now BEVs/PHEVs bite our budgets the least.
(I'm guessing that we're going to see significant drops in battery prices rather than significant drops in hydrogen and fuel cell engines in our near future. Who knows what reality will be 50, 100 years from now?)
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:42 am
29 Sep 2008
http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen.png
http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen4.png
http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen3.png
As Earl was mentioning "Aggressive" optimistic scenarios would be 2x. However that assumes quite a lot in favor of the hydrogen vehicle, and related infrastructure. Including of course, regenerative braking with a rapid-charge battery.
It also makes the assumption that you aren't just giving it wimpy acceleration and lightweight materials to put less strain on the electricity demand.
-David Ahlport
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:47 am
29 Sep 2008
Since it'd be 2x electric + hydrogen refueling infrastructure.
-David Ahlport
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Earl Killian Posted 10:52 am
29 Sep 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 11:50 pm
29 Sep 2008
Mass production of batteries is orders of magnitude simpler than mass production of hydrogen infrastructure and fuel cell vehicles. Battery powered cars with standard fueled backup generators need no new infrastructure. Even billing for the kwhs to recharge can be done via credit card internet account.
The addition of a self contained ICE backup generator to extend the range of even a 20 mile plugin hybrid, gives them the fueling convenience and range of a gas guzzler, with the ultra efficiency of 100+ mpg average fuel sipping performance.
That kind of mileage across the vehicle fleet, coupled with the reduction of driving miles with bikes, mass transit, ridesharing, and freight rail replacing long haul trucking, can eliminate imported oil over 10 years and maybe all oil use in twenty years.
As batteries get better, less and less fuel would be needed. And some amount of eco-friendly biofuel, biogas from waste and biodiesel from algae waste pricessing could provide (the remaining 10% of present oil consumption) as oil runs out.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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