Comment by _hypx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _hypx | Hacker News Reader

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Clean energy is regularly free or even negatively priced. It is at the very least, extremely cheap. It's funny how PV panels at 20% efficiency never stopped it from catching on. Making the same accusation against hydrogen is just repeating this already debunked argument.

The whole infrastructure for hydrogen will just repurpose or modify natural gas infrastructure. It is not expensive. It will be vastly cheaper than trying to do it entirely with batteries. And without any resource constraints, it is guaranteed to eventually be cheaper than bunker fuel. Again, you are repeating anti-wind and anti-solar argument the past. If those technologies plunged to nearly nothing in cost, why would the next renewable technology that relies on an extremely plentiful substance be any different?

Finally, you're entering into the "I'm just making this shit up" phase of your argument. People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Something similar has happened with a variety of other green fuels like methanol, ammonia, etc. None of this is even that challenging of a problem. The only thing that is proving to be hard is trying to power everything with a battery. It is totally nuts for ships, and that's even before realizing how much it costs.

FYI, nuclear has been killed off due to legislation, many due to fears over radioactive waste. But hydrogen and other chemical fuels have no such concerns. It will scale the same as wind and solar did.

> People have already made ships to run on hydrogen.

Only at a significant loss. You can go out and buy a hydrogen powered car today and pay more for the car, have worse range, pay more for energy to move that car, and have to deal with limited infrastructure. People are operating battery powered boats at a profit, that’s a monumental difference.

Limiting yourself to “free” for electricity means spending more money on equipment. Actually making industrial scale hydrogen requires expensive electrolysis equipment and having that sit idle 95% of the time is expensive independent of electricity costs. Similarly aiming for seasonal storage requires investment in storage so it’s there when you want it. This isn’t free and no you can’t just reuse natural gas systems, even just detecting small leaks requires different equipment, the demand is higher, hydrogen embrittlement is a serious problem, and the energy density is different.

You can consistently get ~3c/kWh for close to 8 hours a day via building your solar farm, but that means your electrolysis equipment is still idle 66% of the time and your still paying 3c/0.18 = 16.7c/kWh just for electricity ignoring other costs to get 1kWh of useful energy at the end.

This is why Hydrogen is currently expensive, until something fundamentally changes with the underlying economics due to new technology it’s going to stay expensive.

Nuclear has both economic and risk issue. Legislation impacted individual countries but a handful are built each year. It’s not even just disasters, several nuclear projects have gone wildly over budget scaring both small countries and free market investors. The risks are high even ignoring accidents and the rewards don’t match those risks.

Westinghouse top executives were convicted of fraud for over covering up project failures in two canceled South Carolina nuclear reactors: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-exe...

That’s part of a long list of failed US reactors and an even longer list globally some of which where even worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_nuclear_pow...

That said, I acknowledge politics has played a role it’s simply not the most important one. Japan was happy with nuclear until an unexpected 500 dollar bill, other countries look at that and get concerned.

Because prototype vehicles are not supposed to be profit centers. The fact that now you are shifting to cars shows how uninterested you were in this topic to begin with.

Please stop making shit up. We already have seen people reuse or at least test natural gas infrastructure with hydrogen. There are no showstopper problems. It is a fully solvable problem and is going to happen.

You literally are making up your own fictional scenario to rationalize how you can disconnect $0.02/kWh electricity from cheap hydrogen. This is pure incoherent rubbish.

Ultimately, you are creating an alternative reality to rationalize your delusion that batteries can power anything while nothing else can. No fucking idea why are you ranting about nuclear safety either. It is one of the safest energy sources out there.

Cars are meaningful because they clearly demonstrate current Hydrogen pricing and technical issues.

Economics isn’t rubbish. Yes you can get X kWh at below Yc/kWh every month, *as long as you are willing to let equipment sit mostly idle. My point about 3c/kWh is simply the point where you can both operate equipment 1/3 of the time in most locations thus minimizing transmission issues, and you aren’t limited by the surplus of the local electricity grid. It’s simply a point of comparison. Sure, you can get

It’s also meaningful when including transportation and all other overhead bunker fuel gives you ~15c/kWh after you burn it, though this varies a lot. https://agtransport.usda.gov/Fuel/Daily-Bunker-Fuel-Prices/y...

Include overhead and green hydrogen generation is currently dramatically more expensive and it needs drastic efficiency gains to be viable. That’s simply the truth.

Your only input is your super cheap electricity and water. Your own logic dictates that hydrogen must be cheap. Scaling up is the only thing that has to happen.

You should stop doing logical backflips and making nonsensical comparisons.

> Because prototype vehicles are not supposed to be profit centers.

Hydrogen systems still being classified as prototypes after decades of research should tell you something. Nobody is making hydrogen boats because they’re simply inferior in just about every conceivable way. Cars got heavily subsidized, billions in R&D over decades, and are a failure. Hydrogen boats aren’t even vaguely worth trying to bring to market.

Economics uncovers bullshit, you can’t hand wave away the cost of infrastructure, someone needs to pay to create and maintain it. Solar can hit 2c/kWh for a few hours per day in a few areas of the globe, but now you’re both idling infrastructure and stuck with long distance transportation of Hydrogen and or electricity which has their own associated costs. Just do X sounds great, but doing X always has associated costs.

For comparison, including transportation and all other overhead bunker fuel gives you ~15c/kWh after you burn it, though this varies a lot. It’s horrifyingly polluting, but dirt cheap.

Scale alone isn’t going to fix green hydrogen it requires a fundamental breakthrough.

And BEVs are well over a hundred years old. You are so fucking dishonest, it's seriously painful talking to you. You didn't even register the part where I said hydrogen boats already exist. You aren't even trying to have a conversation about green shipping. It's all just about more BEV marketing from you. Everything you say can be a lie to further this goal.

Seriously, who do you work for? I can't imagine you not having an agenda here.

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