SHOOOOCCCKKKKKKK š¤Æ
Italy is struggling to get its hydrogen trains working
https://ferrovie.info/treni-reali/treni-a-idrogeno-in-lombardia-rischio-ritardi-fino-al-2028.html
Hereās an idea: put up a WIRE. Or use a battery
We have enough cases from Germany already to know that *even if* these trains run, they wonāt run well or economically
The gas industry has been lobbying hard for hydrogen power because creating hydrogen via electrolysis is expensive but thereās a lot thatās a byproduct of gas extraction and so once youāve built the infrastructure you realise that fossil fuels are a much cheaper source of supply than renewables.
This is not true of other forms of electrical power, where gas is one of the most expensive sources and is primarily used because there isnāt yet enough renewable supply.
And you just need to convince politicians that hydrogen is the future to get the investment, and hydrogen sounds exciting and futuristic, whereas power lines are century-old technology.
Note that hydrogen canāt be transported in existing gas pipelines. The smaller molecules leak a lot more and you get a lot of loss (and, importantly, loss of pressure) over long runs. In the UK, the government is upgrading a load of gas pipes to be able to carry hydrogen because they listened to fossil fuel lobbyists. This is causing road damage in a time when potholes are the number one complaint from voters.
Storage is also a bit tricky. Hydrogen is incredibly corrosive and large-scale storage at the pressures needed to be useful is expensive.
@jsl @drgroftehauge @jon @bebraw.bsky.social
That's the theory, but it's not a very efficient way of storing power. There are much more efficient ways of turning excess electricity into something you can turn back into electricity when demand is heavy.
@david_chisnall @drgroftehauge @jon @bebraw.bsky.social Do you have any comparison of systems?
I only see statements like [1] and it's either already done where sensible (pumped hydro) or untested (liquid air) or hard to imagine at scale (rotary mass; may be my limited imagination)
Link
[1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/01/renewable-energy-storage-innovations-batteries/
@jon For an industry having, ideally, the safety of passengers and dangerous goods as number one top highest absolute priority, this quest for hydrogen energy for transport sounds so.. absolutely.. bad. I'm sorry yes, train derailments or collisions happen, and that with liquid hydrogen on board brings a chill down my spine.
Leaving aside all the negative externalities of so-called "grey hydrogen" or the very energy inefficient electrolysis, the infrastructure issues, the storage difficulty and the operations difficulty aside. Even for airplanes it's a bad alternative. H2 is an option for space industry.
Has most probably more to do with the corrup... than about the hydrogen propulsion..
@jon The only benefit of hydrogen is that it feels like it is like diesel. It is not. Fuel cells are complicated and there is little experience deploying these in the field. You still need a battery and an electric motor. Making something hydrogen tight is very hard.
Alon had a very interesting article a few years back, explaining this is basically anti-green ideology.
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/11/29/quick-note-anti-green-identity-politics/
Rail might correctly consider itself the greenest transport mode, but there is nevertheless plenty railways can do to decarbonise - not least by doing away with diesel as the primary fuel to power trains on non-electrified lines. The question then comes: how best to do that? Anyone who follows the
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[tj] - knows what your packets are thinking
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