The world's largest green hydrogen project, which generates hydrogen from solar and wind renewables without emitting carbon dioxide, produced its first batch of "green hydrogen" on Thursday in Ordos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China.
Still, transmission of hydrogen is tough, and conversion to hydrogen is inefficient relative to batteries. Given the rapid advances in battery technology, hydrogen may just not make much sense long term. Or maybe it will. So try it, but don’t bet the family farm on it.
As for the grid in the US, we need to fix it anyway. And some of its shortcomings can be mitigated by smart grid strategies that allow devices to switch on and off to take load off the grid. That’s already commonly done with heating/cooling, but can be extended to other devices that can have deferred energy usage.
I looked around a little bit. Blends are possible at low levels (5%) But above that, things get dicey. The smaller hydrogen molecules can leak out of plastic pipes intended for methane, causing dangerous ignitions.
Still, transmission of hydrogen is tough, and conversion to hydrogen is inefficient relative to batteries. Given the rapid advances in battery technology, hydrogen may just not make much sense long term. Or maybe it will. So try it, but don’t bet the family farm on it.
As for the grid in the US, we need to fix it anyway. And some of its shortcomings can be mitigated by smart grid strategies that allow devices to switch on and off to take load off the grid. That’s already commonly done with heating/cooling, but can be extended to other devices that can have deferred energy usage.
Is it though? I mean, don’t we already have infrastructure which pipes gases into buildings?
I looked around a little bit. Blends are possible at low levels (5%) But above that, things get dicey. The smaller hydrogen molecules can leak out of plastic pipes intended for methane, causing dangerous ignitions.