Future infrastructure for residential electric service?

[Alan Lightstone]

I was told that hydrogen fuel can be produced at your home using one solar panel that would provide all of your home and transportation energy needs. The problem is political not physical. The government and big energy companies do not want us to have that capability. Sounds crazy I know but about ten years ago Honda was advertising a new car that came with a hydrogen generator that was capable of providing all the energy one home needed. Honda had a TV commercial but it ran for only a couple of days and the government shut it down. A bunch of guys where I worked were pretty excited about the concept and got pretty mad when it disappeared. Hydrogen gas flashed from a liquid would require a very substantial fuel tank that the government will never approve for the highways.

California has now 65 light-duty open retail hydrogen filling stations, with another 35 planned.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-repor...ogen-refueling

Of course that is a tiny amount, and almost all around Los Angeles and San Francisco.

I've always felt that hydrogen powered vehicles was the real answer, but also felt that Toyota missed the boat by concentrating on that while everyone else was going heavily into battery powered EVs.

[Malcolm McLeod]

I was told that hydrogen fuel can be produced at your home using one solar panel that would provide all of your home and transportation energy needs. The problem is political not physical. The government and big energy companies do not want us to have that capability. ...

I work for a company most would probably call 'big energy', and know our leadership. I am comfortable saying we are not standing in the way of H2 development. In fact, as alluded to earlier, we'll gladly sell you Blue H2 when you are away from your home generator. (The 'one solar panel' might be optimistic for 'all' needs, but maybe for light users...??)

As for the government, ...well... (insert TOS).

I do know a bit about the burdens of handling hydrogen, in its H2S form: it disperses easily in water, oil, and NG, causes embrittlement, and then when the pump or pipe service shatters like rock candy, it will kill the Tech dispatched to repair it. (And equally tragic, his wife who came to look for him. The children in the back seat survived.) Pure H2 causes similar embrittlement, and although certainly a bit less deadly to breathe, will simply leak thru a solid steel vessel. Its other transportation inefficiencies have been discussed at length, so will end there.

[Rollie Meyers]

One thing I think we will see is some kind of smart breaker system. My last house had a 100 amp service, about 2400sqft with 5 bedrooms, and the incoming main was buried under the paved street with the last transformer or switchbox in my across the street neighbor's front yard.

To run an EV in that house, I would have to charge the vehicle after everyone went to bed for the night. However, if my cook stove and clothes dryer had some kind of smart breaker on them that could tell the EV smart charger "I am going to draw startup current in 50 microseconds," then the EV charger could let up on current draw until the cookstove/ clothes dryer settled down to run current draw.

I dunno how many billions of $ of copper we have underground for the grid already, but we are going to have to work with what we got.

Not much copper used in transmission & distribution, mostly aluminum conductors.

[Doug Garson]

One thing I think we will see is some kind of smart breaker system. My last house had a 100 amp service, about 2400sqft with 5 bedrooms, and the incoming main was buried under the paved street with the last transformer or switchbox in my across the street neighbor's front yard.

To run an EV in that house, I would have to charge the vehicle after everyone went to bed for the night. However, if my cook stove and clothes dryer had some kind of smart breaker on them that could tell the EV smart charger "I am going to draw startup current in 50 microseconds," then the EV charger could let up on current draw until the cookstove/ clothes dryer settled down to run current draw.

I dunno how many billions of $ of copper we have underground for the grid already, but we are going to have to work with what we got.

Don't think this will require smart breakers, I think it can be achieved by smart devices. We just replaced our fridge and stove, both are wifi enabled. We also recently purchased a portable air conditioner that is wifi enabled and some time ago bought a whole house humidifier and garage door opener also wifi enabled along with smart switches for our outdoor house and yard lights. I'm sure our next clothes dryer and washer will likely be wifi enabled along with any other new appliances. So if they were all compatible, they could communicate with a car charger to control when it would charge the car.

[Edward Weber]

Don't think this will require smart breakers, I think it can be achieved by smart devices. We just replaced our fridge and stove, both are wifi enabled. We also recently purchased a portable air conditioner that is wifi enabled and some time ago bought a whole house humidifier and garage door opener also wifi enabled along with smart switches for our outdoor house and yard lights. I'm sure our next clothes dryer and washer will likely be wifi enabled along with any other new appliances. So if they were all compatible, they could communicate with a car charger to control when it would charge the car.

As long as your wi-fi signal is strong, when it goes out, you're sunk.

[Doug Garson]

As long as your wi-fi signal is strong, when it goes out, you're sunk.

I forget the last time we lost WIFI for more than a few minutes and the charger could be programmed to shut off if it didn't receive a WIFI signal.

[Curt Harms]

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For transportation, my money is on bio-fuels.
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SAF(sustainable aviation fuel) is already a thing. SAF is sometimes a blend of traditional Jet Fuel and renewable sources. There have been flights where one engine has run on 100% SAF for extended periods. The benefit to this approach is that the SAF is 'drop in', it works in existing engines. Whether it's possible or practical to produce enough feedstocks for SAF or other liquid fuels beyond demonstration scale is an unanswered question AFAIK.

[Doug Garson]

I don't think there is any one solution. There will be several interim and long term solutions before the problem is solved. I doubt many of us will be around long enough to see the day when CO2 levels start going down toward pre fossil fuel levels.

[Mike Henderson]

I was told that hydrogen fuel can be produced at your home using one solar panel that would provide all of your home and transportation energy needs. The problem is political not physical. The government and big energy companies do not want us to have that capability. Sounds crazy I know but about ten years ago Honda was advertising a new car that came with a hydrogen generator that was capable of providing all the energy one home needed. Honda had a TV commercial but it ran for only a couple of days and the government shut it down. A bunch of guys where I worked were pretty excited about the concept and got pretty mad when it disappeared. Hydrogen gas flashed from a liquid would require a very substantial fuel tank that the government will never approve for the highways.

No matter what form it's in, it's all energy. It's highly unlikey that one solar panel could provide all your home and transporation energy needs. A solar panel can produce somewhere between 250 watts to 400 watts, and that's under ideal conditions (directly facing the sun and no clouds). Let's say an average of 300 watts, and 8 hours per day. That's 2.4kWhr.

Now, let's convert that to hydrogen. With electrolysis of water, the resulting hydrogen will have about 70% of the input energy, or about 1.7 kWhr. Then, you have to put it into a fuel cell and that's about 60% efficient, giving you 1kWhr. That's not much. Over a week, under ideal conditions you'd get 7kWhrs. Even if your electricity costs you $0.30 per kWhr, that's $2.10.

Then you have some issues when using hydrogen in a vehicle. One is the fuel tank. You have to compress the hydrogen to a very high pressure in order to get enough range (to be able to store enough hydrogen in your vehicle) and that means a heavy fuel tank and danger of rupture in an accident.

Also note that almost all hydrogen vehicles also have batteries in them. The reason is that the fuel cell used in the vehicle is usually based on normal cruising energy demand (for cost reasons). The battery is there to provide the extra energy needed when you accelerate or go up hill.

If you work out the cost of commercial hydrogen from electrolysis you will find that the energy cost per mile is a lot more than energy from a battery. I just do not see any way that hydrogen can compete with a family level battery vehicle. It might have a chance for large commercial vehicles where the size and weight of a battery is not acceptable.

Mike

[Bill Dufour]

I was surprised to find the tesla chargers are not that smart. They follow the 80% rule all the time. I will use an example of 100 amp breaker to keep the math easy.
NEC says they can draw 80% 0f 100 amps continuously to charge the car. So that is what they do.
If they were smarter they could draw 100 amps for three hours then drop down to 80 amps until fully charged. Of course if the charger then switched to a different car and restarted at 100 amps the 100% draw might violate the 3 hour limit for 100% amp draw.
BillD

[Malcolm McLeod]

SAF(sustainable aviation fuel) is already a thing. SAF is sometimes a blend of traditional Jet Fuel and renewable sources. There have been flights where one engine has run on 100% SAF for extended periods. The benefit to this approach is that the SAF is 'drop in', it works in existing engines. Whether it's possible or practical to produce enough feedstocks for SAF or other liquid fuels beyond demonstration scale is an unanswered question AFAIK.

People tend to get excited about some revolutionary technology, but getting that from demonstration scale to production scale is always key - - and the downfall of many such 'revolutions'.

One component of SAF is called MTJ (Methanol to Jet). It can upgrade many feedstocks (forestry or agri residues, and even municipal solid waste), or convert lower-carbon hydrogen and CO2 into Jet-A. Testing has gone well so far, and commercial-scale processing facility design is done. We'll see if it can get over the real-world hurdle of economics, actual commercialization, and public acceptance.

Personally, in the medium term (25-75yrs) I suspect we'll use (GMO?) algae or bacteria to grow diesel/Jet-A (or at least a precursor for them). Result can be carbon neutral and leverages the existing liquid fuels handling infrastructure that the world's transportation sector has in place today.

[Curt Harms]

For those that say "But I don't have a Jet", there's not a lot of difference between Jet fuel and Diesel. In fact, there are rumors of Ag Planes with turbine engines running on Diesel, not legally of course.

[Doug Garson]

People tend to get excited about some revolutionary technology, but getting that from demonstration scale to production scale is always key - - and the downfall of many such 'revolutions'.

One component of SAF is called MTJ (Methanol to Jet). It can upgrade many feedstocks (forestry or agri residues, and even municipal solid waste), or convert lower-carbon hydrogen and CO2 into Jet-A. Testing has gone well so far, and commercial-scale processing facility design is done. We'll see if it can get over the real-world hurdle of economics, actual commercialization, and public acceptance.

Personally, in the medium term (25-75yrs) I suspect we'll use (GMO?) algae or bacteria to grow diesel/Jet-A (or at least a precursor for them). Result can be carbon neutral and leverages the existing liquid fuels handling infrastructure that the world's transportation sector has in place today.

Just to put it into perspective, aviation produces about 9 to 12% of US transportation greenhouse gas emissions which is responsible for about 29% of total US GHG emissions. SAF currently replaces about 0.1% of fossil fuel based jet fuel. So currently SAF replaces about 0.0029% of US GHG emissions. It may be a promising alternative but it has a long long way to go before it has significant impact.

[mike stenson]

For those that say "But I don't have a Jet", there's not a lot of difference between Jet fuel and Diesel. In fact, there are rumors of Ag Planes with turbine engines running on Diesel, not legally of course.

My old Dodge manual actually stated that you could run jet-A or kerosene in the Cummins.

[Greg Quenneville]

I read that supplying just US aviation with algae based jet fuel would require a lake that would cover seven states. So no, not in its current form.

Aviation makes approximately 3% of the world’s CO2 output. More efficient engines always get offset by more airplanes.

Someone mentioned running an ag plane on diesel…out in the boonies why not? But diesel is a lot more expensive than Jet A. Back in the day we used to use “clean arctic diesel” as an approved substitute for jet fuel. I laughed at the idea that I would one day be crouched by a D-9 Cat with a siphon hose and a 45 gallon drum to top up the Twin Otter