A community about hydrogen and its use as a way to fight climate change.
All the disadvantages of light rail and busses combined with the high cost and limited environmental benefits of hydrogen? What am I missing here?
I can maybe understand the use of hydrogen for long-haul train rides, but if you're building trams it makes zero sense. Why not just use regular light rail or trolleybusses if you can't justify the cost of laying down rail?
@LimitedWard It actually isn't light rail. It just runs on the road.
Hydrogen will be cheaper and better than battery powered versions of the same thing. The anti-hydrogen rhetoric in these types of scenarios is pure FUD.
You can sometimes justify directly electrified vehicles, assuming you have something like overhead wires or electrified rail, but that only happens in high-density routes.
It's a glorified bendy-bus.
When Montpellier looked at the costs, they found that hydrogen buses would run roughly 6 times the cost of battery electric, so they cancelled their order. A number of other places came to the same conclusion.
BC Transit sold off their hydrogen buses after the 2010 Olympics due to high operating costs and lack of local hydrogen production. The estimate at the time (2014) was they ran over twice the operating costs of their diesel fleet.
The number of extra energy conversions and the complete lack of infrastructure make hydrogen DOA for the foreseeable future.
Montpellier are just liars. It is cheaper to run a hydrogen bus than a battery bus: https://www.actransit.org/article/ac-transit/releases-second-zetbta-study
We live in an era of battery propaganda. It is completely unfeasible to power anything larger than a small vehicle in a competitive way. For vehicles like buses, there would be zero battery powered versions without huge subsidies and/or government mandates. If you must electrify, you will build overhead powerlines.
A hydrogen tech company finds that fuel cells are the way forward, quelle surprise! Pro-hydrogen propaganda.
Typically it's from the oil & gas companies, which would absolutely love to reformulate hydrocarbons to produce all of that lovely 'green' hydrogen.
The bus companies have tried. It doesn't work out. BC Transit is in the back yard of fuel cell developer Ballard. The program was heavily subsidized. It was still too expensive, especially compared to trolley buses, hybrids and even battery electric. Montpellier were looking for a cost effective green transit solution. It was in their best interests to 1) find a solution and 2) go with the cheapest. And they did.
It is always going to be more expensive to take electricity, create hydrogen either by reformulating NG or especially by electrolysis, compress it, transport it and/or store it, than just using the electricity directly to charge a battery.
Rail should be electrified using overhead catenary systems, as has been done for a century.
@LimitedWard This is not a tech company. This is a government program that tested hydrogen and battery buses.
This is AC Transit, not BC Transit.
And no, it is not "always more expensive." When you have excess electricity production, you either lose it entirely or will be forced to make something with it. In that case, it can be making hydrogen. And it will be nearly free in the long-run, since wind and solar are highly intermittent and constantly swing between overproduction and underproduction.
In short, you are just spamming lies, misunderstandings and repeating battery propaganda. You need to stop the bullshit.
Did you read any of it? From your own link cost per mile for battery electric bus is $1.61 and $2.52 for fuel cell electric bus. Mile per gallon (diesel equivalent) is 17.7 for BEB and 7.9 for the FCEB.
If you include current credits, the gap widens to $0.53 to $2.20.
The real kicker was reliability. Miles between Chargeable Road Calls (miles between breakdowns) 59,549 for the BEB and 6,299 for the FCEB.
Zero Emission Transit Bus Technology Analysis, Vol 4 pg.3
That's all consistent with what other jurisdiction find when they compare the two, with some variability due to local fuel and electricity costs.
If you have "excess" generation, you ramp down or shut off sources, depending on technology. Use that time for maintenance, or simply let it sit idle as it's less wear on the equipment.
Did you read any of it? From your own link cost per mile for battery electric bus is $1.61 and $2.52 for fuel cell electric bus.
Which is definitely not a six-fold difference.
If you include current credits, the gap widens to $0.53 to $2.20.
AKA we are subsidizing BEBs way more.
Miles between Chargeable Road Calls (miles between breakdowns) 59,549 for the BEB and 6,299 for the FCEB.
You're cherrypicking one particular period. The final numbers, reported later in the study is 7,015 for the FCEB and 6,465 for the BEB.
That's all consistent with what other jurisdiction find when they compare the two, with some variability due to local fuel and electricity costs.
Wrong. Even if you go by the study in question, you'll find that fuel cost per mile was nearly equal, with both the FBEB and BEB having a cost per mile of ~$1 going by MPDGE of 8.6 and 17.2 respectively. This is listed in the data in Appendix A-6. The final numbers are misleading because the BEB got more subsidies.
This ignores two additional problems. Namely, the BEBs did far fewer miles, requiring more buses to do the same number of routes. And the other is that you need to deal with battery replacements costs, which is far more than fuel cell replacement costs. This means that BEBs will be more expensive overall, as explained here: https://h2fcp.org/sites/default/files/07-24-2020-Foothill-ZEB-Update-to-Board.pdf
If you have "excess" generation, you ramp down or shut off sources, depending on technology. Use that time for maintenance, or simply let it sit idle as it's less wear on the equipment.
That is only true of fossil fuel based systems. It is completely not possible with renewable energy. Honestly, I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion, because it is totally backwards. You must be able to convert curtailed energy production into something, or else it gets lost. Hence why hydrogen can be cheaper than available electricity.