Natural gas is crushing wind and solar power

[dgowin + 43]

The following are hydrogen pipes available for deployment.

[dgowin + 43]

Lots of misinformation out there.

 

Edited February 27, 2020 by dgowin
In accurate

[dgowin + 43]

There are plenty of places to store the gas. Hydrogen Gas.

[dgowin + 43]

The Wind Turbines in the State of Indiana up in the region. Translate to Fowler Indiana, have a utilization rate of from 51% to 55%. Translates to 45% of those Wind Turbines are curtailed and under utilized. Hence the wind is blowing but the electricity is NOT used. ~7 TWh of wind power is thrown away every year in Indiana alone. ERCOT (Texas ISO) Curtails 19TWh of Wind Power every year.

Its irrelevant how much it costs to produce Hydrogen from PEM Elctrolyzers, when there is effectively free power!

And plenty of places to store the gas underground.

[dgowin + 43]

The following red dots are depleted Natural Gas wells in Indiana.

[dgowin + 43]

And for you doubting Thomas-es out there that this can't be done. Imperial Chemical Inc. (subsidiary of ExxonMobile) has been storing hydrogen underground in the Houston area for the last 40 years. They use the hydrogen for removing Sulfur from crude oil.

 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, surrept33 said:

 

In many of these countries, especially if you ignored issues related to emissions, coal would be the answer because of the capital expense involved with building up (the currently missing) natural gas infrastructure in those countries, whether it is on the supply or demand side. 

This is why renewables + storage might have a leg up on natural gas in large parts of the developing world, particularly since they would benefit from the learning curves and technology development (in the more developed world) that might drive costs further with scale.

 

 

Or let them use coal! They are developing and need energy!

[dgowin + 43]

ITM Power makes some great Industrial PEM Electrolyzers.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

Producing 4050 kg of hydrogen each day. Thats equivalent to producing 4050 gallons of gasoline per day. And for the cost of a single Fracked Shale Oil well ($10M). I can understand why the banker are not willing to fund fossil fuel anymore.

 

[dgowin + 43]

26 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Or let them use coal! They are developing and need energy!

Coal? I'm from the utility industry. I can tell you why we stopped using coal. It has nothing to do with environmentalism. Its about economics.Coal has several different grades. Anthricite, Bitamun and Lignite. (The DOE has subgraded much of this to muddy the waters).

Anthracite - Great Coal from Pennsylvania. Its been gone for 40 years.

Bitumen - 70% to 40% carbon content. Most of this today is in the 50% to 60% carbon content.

Lignite - Brown Coal. Dirt. Your burning dirt in that coal fired power plant.

Scrubbers - When you burn coal with at least 30% ash content (Bitumen?) you must run a scrubber. Its un-cool to snow ash on your neighbors. With a scrubber 50% of the energy from the Steam Turbine is consumed by the scrubber.

So burning Bitumen today at 60% carbon content translates into 30% available energy from Steam Turbine availabvle for high tension powerline. With ~6% loss from Power Grid transmission equals 24% of that fuel (Bitumen) energy ready for the customer. A fuel which is mined and transported by the tonne.

Hence, bankers looking out into the future refuse to fund this anymore.

Edited February 27, 2020 by dgowin
miss spell

[surrept33 + 609]

1 hour ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Or let them use coal! They are developing and need energy!

 

There is still a lot of coal plants being built in africa, south asia, and southeast asia.

That being said, the economies there don't exist in a vaccum. Private investment in coal has dried up almost everywhere, so it's primarily public sector sources financing new plants. That's very much subject to changes to government policies. These governments are under increasing domestic pressure to improve environmental outcomes as they are under pressure in meeting developmental objectives, especially in asia. 

So assuming that that there is still continued growth in coal-powered generation, but coal starts dwindling in raw % of primary energy generation (this is the overall trend everywhere except in SE Easia), the question becomes what other forms of generation are both cost competitive and meet other constraints (including any emissions-related constraints).

The answer of course is highly variable to the country in question. What might work for South Africa might be very different than India, Indonesia or Ethiopia. For most of these countries, importing LNG at scale and building up the infrastructure (in large portions of the country) to use it in a cost effective way may not make financial sense at least in the time frame where renewables and renewable storage + future improvements in costs further changes the calculus.

Edited February 27, 2020 by surrept33

[ronwagn + 6,290]

12 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

You've hit it, pal. 

Anything that is superabundant will have a low price. It is a cheap commodity. Natural gas requires far less processing than diesel or gasoline. Or renewables other than hydro IMHO.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 hours ago, dgowin said:

The following are hydrogen pipes available for deployment.

Why bother with expensive hydrogen when you have natural gas without the processing which is usually from natural gas anyway?!

[dgowin + 43]

2 hours ago, ronwagn said:

Why bother with expensive hydrogen when you have natural gas without the processing which is usually from natural gas anyway?!

This is NOT from Natural GAS! Electricity and water.

 

[dgowin + 43]

Anybody out there. DO NOT USE Hydrogen from Steam reforming of Natural Gas!

Hydrogen from Steam reforming is contaminated with Carbon Monoxide and other things!

There is no way to remove these impurities from the hydrogen cost effectively. These contaminates will poison chemical membranes and catalyzes. It alwasy amazes me how many folks poison there Fuel Cells, chemical processing plants and steel production facilities with this flair gas waste from oil refineries.

[surrept33 + 609]

2 hours ago, ronwagn said:

Why bother with expensive hydrogen when you have natural gas without the processing which is usually from natural gas anyway?!

Really the question comes down to:

1. Can you process natural gas into hydrogen and economically capture any byproducts (COx, NOx, SOx) at centralized sites rather than burn natural gas at end use sites (either industrial, commercial, or residential) to produce similar amounts of energy, while counting any emissions burning said natural gas causes (assuming the long term trend is continued tougher regulations on this, as it has been since the '70s). This has historically not been the case, but maybe in the future if there is investment in large scale CCS and costs get driven down.

2. Do renewable prices (and maybe productive uses for renewable overcapacity) and electrolyzer prices come down so much that a new path way for producing hydrogen at economic costs appear. It might not make much sense to use grid power from natural gas to drive electrolysis for example, but maybe wind/solar costs will go down enough that this pathway make sense.

I think where in the world it makes sense to use hydrogen is highly variable depending on many different factors, and even the industries that might use it.

Edited February 27, 2020 by surrept33

[dgowin + 43]

If it wasn't for the EPA, the refineries would be just flaring this waste gas. Now they transform it using steam reforming into contaminated hydrogen and charge you for it. Its purportedly cheap until you calculate the downstream damage from using it.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

This device produces pure 99.999% pure hydrogen from water and electricity.

How? The Proton Exchange Membrain only allows A proton to pass. Therefore pure 99.999% hydrogen.

Look real closely how much energy is consumed producing 4050 kg of hydrogen in 24 hours.

Edited February 27, 2020 by dgowin
correction

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

5 hours ago, dgowin said:

And for you doubting Thomas-es out there that this can't be done. Imperial Chemical Inc. (subsidiary of ExxonMobile) has been storing hydrogen underground in the Houston area for the last 40 years. They use the hydrogen for removing Sulfur from crude oil.

 

For Christ's sake, synthetic fuel is far better. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

35 minutes ago, dgowin said:

If it wasn't for the EPA, the refineries would be just flaring this waste gas. Now they transform it using steam reforming into contaminated hydrogen and charge you for it. Its purportedly cheap until you calculate the downstream damage from using it.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

This device produces pure 99.999% pure hydrogen from water and electricity.

How? The Proton Exchange Membrain only allows A proton to pass. Therefore pure 99.999% hydrogen.

Look real closely how much energy is consumed producing 4050 kg of hydrogen in 24 hours.

At max efficiency, hydrogen from electric power is nowhere near economical for the preparation of various chemicals.

[dgowin + 43]

27 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

At max efficiency, hydrogen from electric power is nowhere near economical for the preparation of various chemicals.

Really? Hmmm.  Lets see.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

Producing 4050 kg of 99.999% pure hydrogen in 24 hours consuming 10 MW of electric power.

And if I purchase a Wind Power Contract from Aces Power Marketing from NextEra Energy for lets say $30 per MW hour.

Page #8 http://www.investor.nexteraenergy.com/~/media/Files/N/NEE-IR/news-and-events/events-and-presentations/2019/08-12-2019/August 2019 Investor Presentation_FINAL.pdf

That should be 10 x $30 per MWh = $300 for 4050 kg of 99.999% pure hydrogen.

Sorry I'm going to have to call BS!

 

Edited February 27, 2020 by dgowin

[NickW + 2,714]

18 hours ago, ronwagn said:

What are NORM'S?

Naturally Occurring Radiative Materials - mostly scale that forms inside oil and gas pipes

[NickW + 2,714]

4 hours ago, ronwagn said:

Why bother with expensive hydrogen when you have natural gas without the processing which is usually from natural gas anyway?!

Well if you are a net importer but have lots of surplus intermittent electricity then converting it into hydrogen and injecting into your gas grid may make sense or using it for chemical / fertiliser manufacture

[dgowin + 43]

8 minutes ago, NickW said:

Well if you are a net importer but have lots of surplus intermittent electricity then converting it into hydrogen and injecting into your gas grid may make sense or using it for chemical / fertiliser manufacture

After Germany started injecting hydrogen from ITM PEM Elctrolyzers (Royal Dutch Shell project) last summer into the gas grid. Up to a 20% mix with natural gas. Many Gas Utilities here in the United States have been taking this idea seriously. The German's call it Power2Gas.

Hydrogen has a higher BTU count per kg than methane. Almost 3 times. Its a clean way to increase the BTU count of your gas.

They've been using excess electricity from the North Sea Wind Turbine Farm.

Edited February 27, 2020 by dgowin

[NickW + 2,714]

1 hour ago, dgowin said:

After Germany started injecting hydrogen from ITM PEM Elctrolyzers (Royal Dutch Shell project) last summer into the gas grid. Up to a 20% mix with natural gas. Many Gas Utilities here in the United States have been taking this idea seriously. The German's call it Power2Gas.

Hydrogen has a higher BTU count per kg than methane. Almost 3 times. Its a clean way to increase the BTU count of your gas.

They've been using excess electricity from the North Sea Wind Turbine Farm.

Per KG yes but that calorific value by the m3 (at ATM) is much lower. Hydrogen is 11MJ compared to 39MJ for natural gas. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 hours ago, dgowin said:

Really? Hmmm.  Lets see.

https://www.itm-power.com/images/Products/HGasXMW.pdf

Producing 4050 kg of 99.999% pure hydrogen in 24 hours consuming 10 MW of electric power.

And if I purchase a Wind Power Contract from Aces Power Marketing from NextEra Energy for lets say $30 per MW hour.

Page #8 http://www.investor.nexteraenergy.com/~/media/Files/N/NEE-IR/news-and-events/events-and-presentations/2019/08-12-2019/August 2019 Investor Presentation_FINAL.pdf

That should be 10 x $30 per MWh = $300 for 4050 kg of 99.999% pure hydrogen.

Sorry I'm going to have to call BS!

 

Holy hell your figures are way off, and $30 per MWh is pure fantasy for paying off wind or solar. Let me show you what 1000 kg of hydrogen demands at 100% efficiency. 

1000 kg x 1000g = 1,000,000g 

1,000,000 g / 2.0158 g/mol H2 = 496080 mol H2

496080 mol H2 x 292 kJ/mol (energy required to split one mole of water to yield one mole of H2) = 144,855,650 kJ

Divide by 1000 to get MJ, then by 3600 to get MWh = 40 MWh for 1000 kg of Hydrogen gas.

With your power figure, this equates to $1200 per ton, not 300. Oh wait... it's even worse. You said $300 per FOUR THOUSAND AND FIFTY. 

Edited February 27, 2020 by KeyboardWarrior

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

1 hour ago, dgowin said:

After Germany started injecting hydrogen from ITM PEM Elctrolyzers (Royal Dutch Shell project) last summer into the gas grid. Up to a 20% mix with natural gas. Many Gas Utilities here in the United States have been taking this idea seriously. The German's call it Power2Gas.

Hydrogen has a higher BTU count per kg than methane. Almost 3 times. Its a clean way to increase the BTU count of your gas.

They've been using excess electricity from the North Sea Wind Turbine Farm.

Looks like you have no understanding of density either.