donald said:
Are we talking 'today's plan for storage...' or 'today's answer to storage...'?
I confess I have not read every entry in this ongoing tennis match of a thread but I have heard of and seen no independent reports of any commercial H2 excess renewable energy storage facilities on any grid in the world.
If you have any links, I'd be interested to read about it.
Donald, welcome to the thread. This thread has been happening for about a year, and the important background info is in the first 20 or so pages. At least scanning the thread will bring you much more than it will me, as I've been here from the beginning and am boring the others to death by bringing things forward.
For the background of how H2 is being used TODAY for storage and how the infrastructure is being placed TODAY to support wide-scale roll-out of FCEV in 2015/2016, the first thing to do is to become familiar with Rifkin's
Third Industrial Revolution. This is the plan that's been adopted by the entire EU and is in advanced deployment in Germany and Denmark. It's also being deployed in China, parts of central Asia, and has been adopted by the UN for the developing countries.
Audi Hydrogen as transportation fuel, and as a precursor to synthetic 'natural gas' for transportation. Also Rifkin and Daimler.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=332980#p332980
Partial transcript from one of Rifkin's talks on the TIR plan and how it's being implemented in Germany, along with a link to the original talk.
The first video summarizes the 5 pillars of the TIR. The others show how the pieces fit together and how not deploying them together in Germany caused significant curtailment of renewable generation.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=333790#p333790
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=333636#p333636
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=335266#p335266
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=335290#p335290
This is a talk by the CEO of one of the companies supplying wind-to-H2 equipment in Germany. He was formerly a lead engineer for Toyota Canada for the Prius, and former officer of a solar panel manufacturer. This gets directly into how wind to H2 works, and goes into the gory details of why it's better than pumped storage, CAES, and other methods in Europe. This doesn't mention TIR by name, but is about Pillar 3: storage and provides an essential input to Pillar 5: transportation.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=335083#p335083
Since this is another summary post, here are the five pillars of TIR:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=333790#p333790
And lest we think this is a lot of academic patter, Germany, since the Chancellor's come in:
Pillar 1: they're at 25% green electricity already and they're heading to 35% by 2020.
Pillar 2: Germany's converted one million buildings in the last seven years - they're producing small amounts of [excess] green electricity and a third of a million net jobs. They've just begun. Denmark's doing just as well. So when people say: "It can't be done" it can be done. And when people say: "Well, show me!" let's take the number one economic power per capita in the world Germany and you'll see it being done right there - at near zero marginal cost for energy.
Pillar 3: Storage. The sun's not always shining...the wind blows at night and you've got to have the electricity during the day... The water tables can be down for hydroelectricity due to climate change drought... These are intermittent energies and we've got to store them. We at the EU level are in favor of ALL storage: batteries, flywheels, capacitors, air compression, water pumping, we like them all! But I must say we put most of our focus at the center of all these storage networks on hydrogen [using electrolysis and fuel cells]. Engineers, this is a tiny thermodynamic loss compared to bringing oil, coal, gas, and uranium every step of conversion and loss to the end user.
Pillar 4 - this is where the internet revolution combines with the new distributed renewable energies to create a nervous system for the new general purpose technology platform. We're using off the shelf internet technology and IT technology and we're transforming the power grid in Europe into an energy internet - a distributed smart grid. If you hear political and business leaders saying: "Oh, we like that smart grid" ask them what kind - centralized or distributed? Centralized means they put an advanced meter on your home and you get all the information only going to them at headquarters and it's all proprietary. That has nothing to do with this. This is an energy internet - a distributed smart grid. It'll connect everything to everything so that when millions of buildings are producing just small amounts of electricity and storing it as hydrogen... Then if you don't need some of that green electricity during the day or week or month, you can program your software right there with your own killer app from home and send that green electricity across an energy internet that in our case extends from the Irish Sea to the doorstep of Russia. Just like we create information, store it in digital, and share it on-line. Deutsche Telekom has tested successfully the smart grid across Germany. Storage is now in with E.ON and Hydrogenics as well - they're just putting it on-line.
Pillar 5 - logistics. Electric vehicles are here; fuel cell cars, trucks, and buses between 2015 and 2017 by the six major auto companies - this is a done deal - these are fuel cell vehicles. We'll be able to plug-in our vehicles anywhere, wherever we park across the country there'll will be a parking [spot] plug right there...plug it back into the main grid which is distributed and get green electricity. Let's say you're at work - keep that computer on. So if that electricity price goes up on the grid the computer will tell your car to send your electricity back to the grid. We're already beginning to do that in Europe [on a small scale].
These five pillars are nothing - they're components. It's only when we connect them that we have what we call the general purpose technology platform. It's an infrastructure technology platform. Do not make the mistake that President Obama made...he got bad advice. He wanted a green economy, he still wants a green economy, he spent billions and billions of dollars of tax money for a green economy - it isn't here. Because he spent it on isolated, siloed, pilot projects. So they'd invest in a solar factory in one state, an electric car factory in another state - unconnected! This is an infrastructure revolution.
Editorial comment: Please folks, for the Love of God - please at least read the above summary of the TIR. PLEASE note that Rifkin and the rest of the bloody world are doing massive Snoopy Dancing that BEVs are HERE TO STAY. And Yes, IN ADDITION they're integrating FCEV into the mix because they provide ADDITIONAL benfits and because the ENTIRE SYSTEM is much MORE EFFICIENT than any other system invented so far. TIR is the CONTEXT - hydrogen is just one of the components of coffee in the cup. Nobody is going to remove BEV from the mix because the SYSTEM cannot stand without them! It needs BOTH. It's built around BOTH.
Now, I realize many of you are in California and have this love/hate relationship with CARB. That's fine. Some CA cities are working towards TIR - that's mentioned in a number of Rifkin's talks and in the question and answer sessions sometimes included. But - and this is an ego hit but is true nonetheless - This is one transportation revolution that neither CA nor CARB are orchestrating. They, like the rest of the USA, have already missed the first sailing. The official FCEV roll-out isn't 'supposed' to be until 2015/2016 - so stop complaining about the 100 Hyundai's in California. Hyundai is ramping up to 100,000 Tucson's per year - and they've shipped many more Tucson/IX35 to Europe and Korea that we'll see in the USA for a number of years. Again - that's not because FCEV is bad or because it's too expensive - it's because we failed to keep up with the rest of the developed world. Again. Welcome to the end of the empire, already in progress..... /rant
This much more recent NYTimes article gives a broad overview of the energy-storage conundrum and its current 'state of play'. It mentions the Audi test plant, but also says more money is being put into compressed air, and reports that the best bet in the long run could be in... wait for it ;-) ... batteries.
