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Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can't make its operations work here.

https://lemmy.world/post/11840366

Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can't make its operations work here. - Lemmy.World

Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can’t make its operations work here.::The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can’t make its operations work here. All seven of its California stations will close immediately.

Feb 11, 2024 at 8:00pmWeb
Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024
EVs, Hydrogen Cells, Vegetable Oil, all these alternatives are here to save one thing; The Car Industry. Sounds like the problem might be mode of transport rather than fuel.
Show threadtoofpicFeb 11, 2024
Oh, come on, I live in Copenhagen and cycle daily, but even there, cars are not going anywhere. Smelly-smokey cars, yes, but not cars in general.
Show threadn2burnsFeb 11, 2024
Cars aren’t being eliminated completely, but we can reduce their usage significantly if we look to your home city as an example. In Copenhagen, only 44% of commutes are made by car. In the Bay Area, probably the car-centric area of California, 85% of commutes are by car (I removed the 33% WFH, so 58/67=85%).
Cycling Copenhagen: The Making of a Bike-Friendly City | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Brussels office - European Union

Providing people with the options to safely walk, bike or use public transportation is paramount not only in creating a green and sustainable city, but also a liveable, people-friendly city.

Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Brussels office - European Union
Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024
What is the argument here? Cars are here to stay forever and ever? Most daily commuters could get used to a train. It is possible for most people to live without a car, your city was just designed in a way that requires you to.
Show threadheyitsmikey128Feb 11, 2024
That’s the point, we can’t exactly just resign a city from the ground up to work with public transit especially when it’s not being pushed for by the majority
Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024
Yes but what is the alternative? Can civilians all have their own car when 10 million live in a city? What about 30 million? 100? It stops making sense the more people you have. And on top of that suppliers and transportation services use the same road, too. It is already like flying through the death star out here with half the road being eaten by transportation companies.
Show threadheyitsmikey128Feb 11, 2024
Well with the way the birthrates are going, I think population is going to stabilize.
Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024

Then you’re not looking.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/birth-rate

It is still going up just much more slowly. To say we shouldn’t worry about efficiency cause there will never be that many people disregards the benefits of unloading all of these personal costs to individuals. Vehicles are expensive on top of everything.

Show threadheyitsmikey128Feb 17, 2024
You know that link proves my point? It shows a steady decline in population so we’re actually going to have LESS people.
Show threadSanctusFeb 18, 2024
It shows it slowing. Line still go up.
Show threadbassomitronFeb 11, 2024
So what’s more practical, slowly replacing all ICE cars or completely redesigning entire cities, bulldozing large metro blocks to reconfigure and rebuild?
Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024

As I just commented. How many individuals can drive cars before congestion makes it impossible? 10 million people? 20? 30? The I-10 and 101 stack interchange is already a fucken mess that can’t be expanded. How do you handle exponentially more drivers on the road each year?

Edit: you don’t even have to answer cause we already know from California, you don’t. The rich people just pay pilots to fly them and the plebs get stuck in 2+ hour traffic to go 20 miles.

Show threadabhibeckertFeb 11, 2024

How many individuals can drive cars before congestion makes it impossible

It’s impossible to answer that - there’s just too many other variables, such as how far are people travelling, how many of them are going to the same destination, how many roads are there (not how many lanes, how many roads), etc etc.

Show threadn2burnsFeb 11, 2024
A little column A, a little column B. Mostly, we can have gentle changes to our cities, like removing Single-Family Home and other exclusionary zoning, removing mandatory parking minimums, as well other initiatives to encourage higher density, mixed-use buildings, and active transportation usage.
Show threadTattorackFeb 12, 2024
I dunno, man. I think it’s about time Copenhagen takes a good look at how The Netherlands has been doing things the past decade. Cycling infrastructure can do with a serious upgrade around here, and The Netherlands has proven that, yes, you totally can reduce the number of cars on the street.
Show threadsndrtjFeb 12, 2024

As a Dutch resident, I seriously disagree here. We are just coming out of a 15 year long neoliberal period that has caused the following:

  • public transport costs just went up 12% in January, whereas they are going down in surrounding countries
  • the total amount of minutes of disruptions with the largest rail company has gone up by five-fold over the last 10 years, and no sign of abating
  • the high speed rail line was taken out of service completely at the beginning of this month.
  • peripheral areas have increasingly less access to public transport and other services. Everything gets centralized to Amsterdam.
  • the local tram network in The Hague is downsizing in March due to lack of personnel. And the trams are already completely full in rush hour.

All these things are having the effect of pushing people IN cars, because the alternative is getting more expensive for reduced service. Heck, road congestion is significantly up from pre-pandemic levels and that’s with the neoliberals investing billions upon billions in new asphalt.

Not Just Bikes is in a bubble, and it’s seriously irritating to have foreigners believe we’re this utopia.

Show threadTattorackFeb 12, 2024

I’m Dutch/Danish. Not so much a foreigner as you think. And the prices for public transport are increasing over here as well. Has to do with market inflation… Or so I’ve been told by my roommate who works for DSB’s IT department.

The alternatives are bicycles, not cars. If people are choosing cars instead, despite living in a flat country with bike lanes everywhere, then the problem isn’t the infrastructure.

Show threadAA5BFeb 11, 2024

I do keep hoping one of these will succeed though: we have many different things that move and need multiple solutions to kick our fossil fuel habit.

Walkable cities with train systems are ideal but will take decades to build out, plus at least in the US, we have predictions of people moving away from cities

Battery seems to have won best technology for personal transportation, whether scooters, bikes cars

But what about all those trucks, aircraft, construction and farming equipment, shipping, military vehicles? That’s a lot of fossil fuel usage with no solution in sight

Show threadLungFeb 11, 2024
clearly never lived in a rural setting
Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024
I’m clearly talking about cities. Where most people live.
Show threadVampyreOfNazarethFeb 11, 2024
Where most people think their food supply line is invincible.
Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024
Rural communites still use their space inefficiently. You dont need a mile between houses. Natural resource generation takes no personal freedoms into account, nor does it take human comfort. We have one pie to share until the sun explodes. Best figure out how to share it.
Show threadbassomitronFeb 11, 2024

You ever think that maybe farm/grazing fields are the reason rural homes are spaced so far apart?

Regardless, cars definitely contribute to climate change, but they’re a drop in the bucket compared to industrial pollution. It makes me wonder why there isn’t the same level of hyper fixation on replacing those technologies with carbon neutral solutions as replacing personal vehicles. Let’s just keep those enormous cargo ships burning bunker fuel 24/7. Hell, even large scale meat farms are quite dangerous, as methane is even worse than CO2. You’d think there’d be more of a focus on regulating and slowing down large scale meat production.

Show threadSanctusFeb 11, 2024

If you can’t get people to drop cars, you aren’t going to get them to drop meat for meat alternatives. Its just the piece of our culture that has been deemed easier to change since there are alrsady successful examples of it across the world. Meanwhile, what country has no meat industry and provides a first world standard of living? It may exist, I dont think so though.

Yes, I do think they are further apart due to farms and grazing. My family has a farm in Alabama that has been slowly shrinking because of costs. Does every house out there have its own farm? No! Some of the land plots for newer builds were sold off from my family’s farm, meaning it now envelopes the newer property. Are they still spaced far enough apart that you can’t even tell someone else lives on the property? Of course they are!

Either way, we’ll have these conversations until you and I are rubbing elbows on the $5 per half mile ride share to the corpse starch manufactorum.

Show thread1rreFeb 11, 2024

Ah yes, so all the houses people rarely visit are located close together and the farms they have to visit multiple times a day are even further away?

Deranged thinking by someone who has never considered that their food is grown in a field rather than some factory

Show threadWidowsFavoriteSonFeb 12, 2024

“You don’t need a mile between houses.”

Never lived next door to a pig farm, did you

Show threadAA5BFeb 11, 2024
Looking forward to the upcoming Toyota announcement that they believe in the future of hydrogen more than ever
Show threadjabathekekFeb 11, 2024
Toyota, and Japan as a whole, are in a tricky situation with their electric grid. It’s been developed separately by nine different companies in each region; the southern regions use 60 Hz supply cycles, where-as the northern regions (including Tokyo Electric) use 50 Hz. Add to this the populations reluctance for nuclear power after Fukushima, and you get a very fragile supply grid with limited capacity. Toyota is gunning hard for Hydrogen because Japan itself can’t support EVs and for some reason it doesn’t want to/can’t manufacture both.
Reforming Japan’s Electricity System

As part of the process of formulating a new set of basic principles for the nation’s energy policy, an Advisor…

nippon.com
Show threadAA5BFeb 11, 2024

I’m not sure I buy that. Yes, their electrical grid is a mismatched nightmare, that they should have taken the hit on decades ago. However I see that small chargers for things like phones can adjust to pretty much any electrical grid: why shouldn’t we expect the charger in the car to be equally flexible? Either way, it’s converting to DC

Edit: the article didn’t talk about the differences, except frequency: if the only difference is 50Hz vs 60Hz, most analog electrical stuff probably also works on both. The real problem is they don’t have interconnects nor do they have a regulatory structure allowing separate generating oroviders

Show threadjabathekekFeb 11, 2024
My main point was about capacity, and how the separate grid(s?) hinder attempts to add the capacity needed for EVs. I wasn’t really clear on that though. mb
Show threadBrkdncrFeb 12, 2024
I thought auto ranging power supplies were typically for voltage but not frequency.
Show threadAA5BFeb 12, 2024

Every one I’ve seen gives ranges like 100-240v ac, at 50-60 Hz.

Then electrical grids are large complex systems defined in analog days and subject to variances for weather, usage, distances, etc, so they also need to support that variability

Show threadBrkdncrFeb 12, 2024
Even larger appliances like refrigerators, ovens/ranges, etc?
Show threadzurohkiFeb 11, 2024
Okay, but if they don’t have the electricity for EVs they definitely don’t have enough electricity to waste 2/3 of it turning it into hydrogen and back.
Show threadNoRodentFeb 11, 2024
I mean yeah, but on the other hand with hydrogen you have much more control over when and where you use the electricity as you can choose to manufacture most of it during off-peak periods and when renewables create excess energy. Then you can transport it by pipes or by trucks/ships without overwhelming the electric grid.
Show threadzurohkiFeb 11, 2024
You can do off-peak charging with EVs too, that’s not a magical hydrogen thing. My hot water system is on its own circuit which can be turned off by the power company whenever they need to cut demand, providers have been doing that sort of thing for decades.
Show threadnexusbandFeb 12, 2024
You can’t store the power in EVs for weeks and weeks and also you can’t move it around on a whim, without loosing that stored energy.
Show threadoortjunkFeb 12, 2024

So, let’s say I leave an EV at the airport, with 60% charge, battery in reasonable health, and return 2 months later and head home, having lost maybe 3%. You are telling me that’s…not doing exactly what you’re saying I can’t and didn’t just do?

You don’t also immediately lose all the stored energy either. In a (hypothetical, future tyme) properly kitted out scenario, I leave my EV plugged in at the airport and it’s battery contributes to local grid storage while I’m away. So the 60% I arrived with might drop down during high load, but since my utility company has a handy app I can schedule when I need to unplug and ask for the charge percentage to be topped up in time.

I might even not have to pay to park my car in that scenario, or potentially even earn credits back…

Show threadnexusbandFeb 12, 2024
You will not have lost 3%. You will have lost 30-40% - because no Airport has (and probably never will have) Parking, where you can leave your EV plugged in.
Show threadoortjunkFeb 13, 2024

Explain to me what hypothetical means to you. Then re read my post and note where I point out the hypotheticals.

And you definitely would not lose 30-40%. I’d meet at 8-10% but you are either inexperienced with the tech or shilling an agenda with that 30-40%.

But what would me and my actual lived experience know right?

Show threadzurohkiFeb 12, 2024

What? Of course you can store power for weeks. It doesn’t just dribble out onto the floor. Go away for a month and come home, your EV is still sitting there with the battery charge whatever you left it on.

Yes, EVs use their stored energy for driving… I’m not sure what your point was there. Do you think transporting hydrogen is free and doesn’t cost energy?

Show threadnexusbandFeb 12, 2024

No, it doesn’t dribble on the floored, but to keep the battery conditioned takes a lot of energy. There are countless post around all sorts of forums where the battery was empty after 2 weeks, because cooking the battery in the summer heat took a lot of energy. And you can’t leave an EV plugged in at the Airport.

Transporting hydrogen is cheaper than having to rebuild a whole power grid.

Show threadjabjoeFeb 12, 2024
You don’t need to rebuild the whole grid. The power over night goes up, but that’s OK because night is currently very low usage. Sometimes that has meant turning off renewables as there is no where to put the power. In fact, this can cause negative power costs were they will pay you to take power! So next is where you need it, say a charging forecourt. But that is only during the day, so put in some huge batteries you charge over night. Top up with day time renewables if you can. All this already happens.
Show threadnexusbandFeb 12, 2024
That’s the case for Germany or the UK, not Japan. Bit different there.
Show threadjabjoeFeb 12, 2024
I know nothing about Japan’s grid. How it different?
Show threadzurohkiFeb 12, 2024

I’ve parked mine outside in the Australian summer. It didn’t magically lose energy. The battery is a dense insulated brick on the bottom of the vehicle, so it doesn’t really get hot enough to need cooling even when it’s 40C / 104F and you park in the sun.

You can drain the battery in a few weeks, but you need something running like Sentry Mode consuming power.

Show threadSeaJFeb 12, 2024
That’s more an issue with hydrogen than it is with EVs. Hydrogen is very leaky.
Show threadnexusbandFeb 12, 2024
No it isn’t. Toyota and Hyundai have had tanks for years now that are not leaking anything. Same goes for Linde.
Show threadSeaJFeb 12, 2024

Boil off from liquid hydrogen is still an issue as of 6 months ago:

www.hydrogeninsight.com/innovation/…/2-1-1522238

Rio Tinto’s scientist puts the boil off of hydrogen at about 1% per day in storage tanks.

Solving the liquid hydrogen boil-off problem | US awards $48m towards H2 research and development

Nearly $30m has gone towards improving liquid hydrogen storage and fuelling for vehicles

Hydrogen news and intelligence | Hydrogen Insight
Show threadwizardbeardFeb 12, 2024

So providers just prevent people from using what is potentially their only transportation option as it suits the power company?

Hot water isn’t usually a survival need as long as you have liquid water available. Means of movement can be.

Show threadzurohkiFeb 12, 2024
They don’t just… leave it off. They turn it off for like 15 minutes in the middle of an 8 hour charging session. Nobody notices or cares.
Show threadgmtomFeb 12, 2024

So providers just prevent people from using what is potentially their only transportation option as it suits the power company?

No? Thats effectively the same thing as a gas station closing. You can go elsewhere to charge it.

Show threadnexusbandFeb 12, 2024
The electricity for Hydrogen isn’t bound to any place. If they put up 10 offshore wind turbines exclusively for Hydrogen, that hydrogen can be shipped around the country as needed and wanted. That’s not possible with Grid power and especially not when they have different systems in place.
Show threadzurohkiFeb 12, 2024

Transporting energy isn’t possible with grid power? Really? That’s what grids are for.

Yes, they have the issue of separate incompatible grids, but building complicated interconnects is still going to be easier than building and operating a hydrogen trucking industry.

Show threadColeSlothFeb 12, 2024

It’s actually a lot more work than “add more electricity”. It’s a load demand issue in areas, and if there’s a bunch of high load electric cars trying to charge that needs all the extra equipment and transformers and larger gauge wiring and stuff to go with it.

Like, look at your house. You may just have a 100 amp breaker box on it. Now you couldn’t handle a high-speed charger pulling 40 amps for your car, 30 for the hvac, 20 for lights/tv/computers etc, and then trying to get another 15 or so from and oven or vacuum cleaner. You’ll need a bigger amp breaker box, only you can’t just install that because the line running to your house also isn’t big enough, so you have to have the electric company come out and install a bigger line. But if too many houses in the area need all that, then the main run of lines and equipment going to that neighborhood will also have to be built up.

Toyota doesn’t like all electrics because they don’t want to add a $15,000 battery to a vehicle and make it weigh 1,000 pounds more for a vehicle that will no longer be in working condition 15 to 20 years later. They’ll fully change their tone once battery tech gets better than lithium based stuff made today. Until then hybrids are great. Cheaper lighter batteries with no range issues and easy to replace the batts when needed.

Show threadzurohkiFeb 12, 2024

Like, look at your house. You may just have a 100 amp breaker box on it. Now you couldn’t handle a high-speed charger pulling 40 amps for your car, 30 for the hvac, 20 for lights/tv/computers etc, and then trying to get another 15 or so from and oven or vacuum cleaner. You’ll need a bigger amp breaker box

I’m not sure if you know this, but there are smart chargers that include a sensor to put on the feed going into your house. The charger can throttle up and down as you turn stuff on and off to keep the house’s total power draw under the limit, so you run all your stuff and the car just gets whatever’s left over. You can even have dozens of chargers in a parking garage and program the chargers to share a limited grid connection.

EVs aren’t a fixed load, you can ramp them up or down or shut them off as needed, so they’re pretty easy to accommodate.

Show threadColeSlothFeb 12, 2024
I give simple examples of power load issues and some of y’all take it like a literal argument against just some examples and then the problem goes away. Good grief. Essentially your “easy to accomadate” is just everyone use less power and charge your cars longer".
Show threadzurohkiFeb 13, 2024
The argument against your example scales, though. You can do demand management with EV chargers, either at the household level or grid scale. Unless your power supply is running so close to the edge it can’t cope with existing normal usage, adding EV charging in the midnight to 6am period when power consumption is otherwise really low works just fine. And nobody cares if their car took 6 hours to charge instead of 5, because they sleep through it.
Show threadColeSlothFeb 13, 2024
You know much about Tokyo? How many people there do you think live in houses with a garage compared to apartments? Your idea only works for the portion of people with a house and at least a driveway.
Show threadzurohkiFeb 13, 2024
What does that have to do with grid demand?