Hydrogen Fails to Burn Bright
After spending so much of my personal energy pushing the idea of hydrogen as a storage medium for solar or wind energy, i’ve found some new facts that “Explode the Myth”, bad pun intended. Simply stated, the idea was that any excess electricity generated by the sun, winds, tides, could be used to make hydrogen from water, as way of storing energy. At night or in periods when the solar panel isn’t generating electricity, the hydrogen can be used to power a traditional styled, gas fired generator, but without creating carbon dioxide.
First it’s important to point out that the technology of what i have described is available. We can make hydrogen from water, using electrolysis to split the H2 and O2 from the water. The hydrogen gas can be burnt, without producing CO2, but hydrogen gas will only return 50% of the energy used to split the water that supplied the hydrogen. In other words, it would take 2 tons of hydrogen powering a generator, to produce 1 ton of hydrogen from water. So if 50% is too low, what is enough?
The 50% energy return on hydrogen may not be too low, rather there are better technologies currently envisioned which have an energy return at or above 70%. These storage methods include “pumped storage”, compressed air pressure CAES and hydraulic/mechanical systems. In fact a CAES plant in germany has been online since 1978. So don’t fret over the “loss” of hydrogen, it’s just that there are better ways to naturally generated electricity.
To learn more, check out this article: