And if we put a windmill next to Limbaugh's mike, INFINITE POWER!

[redneckgaijin]

So, I've been thinking about alternative energy- specifically wind and solar power.

Wind and solar are the least polluting (not zero, but close), most environmentally friendly energy sources we currently know of. Unfortunately, there are two major problems with both: (1) they're not a constant or controllable source of power; and (2) the best locations for them tend to be way the hell away from where the power is needed, which means extremely expensive electrical transmission lines, with significant power loss to resistance. (That is, the longer the power line, the less juice actually makes it to the end of it.)

And then I thought: hydrogen!

Hydrogen is not a power source- it's a power storage system. You split up natural gas or (more environmentally friendly) water using electrolysis to get hydrogen, which you then either burn or run through a fuel cell to generate power where it's needed. It's not as energy-efficient as the extremely dense hydrocarbons we burn now, but it's not all that far from it.

Hydrogen doesn't go bad. We can store it in tanks pretty much indefinitely- or, at least, for the life of the tank. We have technology- currently in use in California- that allows hydrogen-fueled cars to be tanked safely and quickly. We can truck it anyplace... and I'm not certain, but wouldn't be surprised if you could pipeline the stuff across the country. Hell, we have natural gas pipelines, and methane and propane are even more explosive than raw hydrogen- more stored energy.

So instead of using solar and wind to power homes... let's use it to power our cars.

Forget ethanol, dump gasoline: hydrogen cars for the future. New literal "gas" stations with windmills on the signs and solar panels on the roof, with the cost of the hydrogen more or less tied to the water bill (plus whatever energy the mills/panels can't deliver). Big combination windfarms and desalinization plants on the Texas gulf coast (say, one at High Island, one around Palacios, and one at King Ranch between Corpus Christi and Brownsville) and near Yuma (negotiate right-of-way with Mexico to pipeline in salt water from the Gulf of California).

Now, there is one significant drawback with this plan: the best places for wind and solar power are also very, very DRY places. Places so dry that we're currently overburdening the water reserves just for the current needs of the people who live in those places. (I'm looking at YOU, Las Vegas and Phoenix.) For those places my clever little idea won't work so well.

But for other places, where there's either plenty of water or a nearby ocean for desalinzation...

... it'd be worth doing, if only someone in an energy company paid attention to laymen like me.

Comments

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

The water is reclaimable from the exhaust, so there's not such a problem in dry places. The big problem is mobile storage - you get something like 1/4 the energy density by volume, so that a conventional sized tank only takes you 50-75 miles in most vehicles.

The other things you say are largely accurate, but with the storage issue they favor electric and fuel cell vehicles.

there is always the

[andreas_schaefer]

conversion cost. Also Hydrogen storage is non-trivial : in a pressure tank one must assume pressure loss due to smal sinngle hydrogem atoms diffusing through the walls ( and possibly doing structural damage to the steel while doing that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement) The material one needs to store without big pressure are costly and rare. If one wanted to store the energy and had unlimited synthetic capability then producing methanol ( CH3OH ) or ethanol (CH3CH2OH) wuld make more sense they could be stored without pressure and one would take CO2 from the atmosphere too.

Without researching the processes involved I would be surprised if one could get 50 percent of the original wind /solar/tide energy from Hydrogen generated ( and that is not including the inefficiency of internal combustion engines ). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen#Energy_carrier.

What the world obviously needs is Shipstones: RAHs answer. (Friday ) - however I have studied just enough physics to doubt that it is possible.

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hype_about_Hydrogen

Admittely the transportation of electricity has a lot of loss to it - otoh one should not forget the power industry WOULD go for more economic distribution if there was any.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

You could use the electricity generated from windmills to proved the energy for water electrolysis? Right? So then all you need to do is get water to the windmill? Then ship out hydrogen.

Of course then it costs money to truck in water or build a pipeline. And then you'd need to build a processing plant to do the actual electrolysis. Maybe something could be done on a small scale? Wouldn't be as efficient, I'd have to do the math...