Is green energy supposed to mean cheaper energy?

johntheexpat

petrol is explosive, but look at how that is everywhere.  And as they are looking at ways to store hydrogen for running cars, they can't be far off coming up with a safe wat to store the very limited amount that will be produced by solar panels (assuming the hydrogen is then regularly burnt off to provide power when the solar panels don't, ie the night after it was produced etc)

EarthRod

Petrol is not stored on peoples' properties. How would you store the hydrogen?

Anyway, this might interest you:

Nanotrees harvest the sun's energy to turn water into hydrogen fuel

"University of California, San Diego electrical engineers are building a forest of tiny nanowire trees in order to cleanly capture solar energy without using fossil fuels and harvest it for hydrogen fuel generation".

IronGiant

That's odd, there's ~140 litres of it parked on my drive right now

And there's a pipe carrying highly inflammable gas right into my kitchen

Member 639844

Magnets, trust me, magnet motors

Have you seen some of the conspiracy stuff on the net about them

DOBLY

The reason why energy is so expensive to the consumer (householder) is that all forms of energy sold are linked to the price of oil, regardless of whether oil was used to generate the energy.  Even the price of coal is linked to the price of oil, as they are substitutable for each other in the energy chain to some degree.

For example, the price of electricity generated by a coal-fired power station has a linked opportunity cost to the price of electricity generated by a natural gas fuelled power station, which in turn has a linked opportunity cost to the price of a hydro power stations output - because each is substitutable for the other when electricity is fed into a national grid system.

In reality, the cost of production isn't really the main factor in the price charged to the consumer - the price is set at what the market will bear, rather than a cost plus profit level.  The excuse that energy companies use for raising prices is usually that the cost of production has risen, whether it be the market price of their inputs (raw materials) or their operating costs (labour, legislation).  The fact that many energy companies are integrated (obtain their raw materials from themselves) seems to be conveniently forgotten - in other words what it costs them to obtain a barrel of oil doesn't matter as they are receiving that much from themselves (or a subsidiary), plus factoring in a margin to be passed on to the consumer at every stage.

I used to work for a multinational vertically integrated "energy" company - we did exploration, production, refining, marketing, trading, power stations, and refined product sales to both industry and the individual consumer.  At all stages of the process, most business unit made huge profits every year for the 15 years that I worked there.  (No, it wasn't ENRON, but they were a customer / partner of ours...)

The company even had an alternative energy division back in the 80's which was sold off for being not profitable enough...... because it wan't funded correctly, and there was a perception that it would take market share away from the fossil fuel parts of the company......

Going back to green energy, it's essentially the same model.  If you are an energy company, your raw material is essentially free - sun, water, wind - what you charge is what you can get away with on top of covering your operating costs, which are often subsidised by the taxpayer already.  True, there are enormous set-up costs, but if you have been in the energy business for decades already, they will be literally a drop in the ocean......

johntheexpat

Thanks for the link.  Hydrogen has got to be the only realistic way ahead. As for storage, the car manufacturers are all working hard on hydrogen storage with a view to effective hydrogen powered cars.  (Something along the lines of adsorption* of hydrogen onto metal surfaces)  (Adsorption, rather than absorption).  With a fine enough "sponge" of (normally precious) metal, you can actually adsorp huge quantities of hydrogen quite safely.  Problems include getting the "sponge" fine enough (as you are adsorping gas onto the surface, you want the surface to volume ratio to be as high as possible) and also effective ways to stop the adsopant becoming clogged with contaminants, which normally stick to the surface much more effectively than hydrogen and thus reduce the effective volume of H2 that can be held.

johntheexpat

Its interesting on the link from Alan CD that they don't mention what happens to the oxygen which must result from the electrloysis of water.  If you can't seperate the hydrogen and oxygen then you have real problems with up-scaling the process safely.  (Those two together, I admit, would give you a big bang!)

johntheexpat

Its quite scary sometimes how the forum software links adverts to what you have recently posted.  Anyway, it came up with this:

Metal hydride H2 storage – fuel cells hydrogen energy – Pragma Industries

"For all my hydrogen storage needs for Gas Chromatography".

Yup, I do a lot of GC here at home.

EarthRod

Interesting stuff John and I agree - hydrogen looks very likely the way to go for development of a good energy source.

The problem, from what I've read, seems to be contaminants. Separating hydrogen from oxygen or the safe storage of explosive gas or liquid (if frozen) hydrogen appears to difficult to keep clear of other chemicals/metals which can, over a period of time, render the process unworkable.

For example, a touch of sulfur in the process might give you H2SO4!

But what a wonderful energy source - ignite hydrogen and you end up with water as a waste product!

EarthRod

Good point.



(But (as you well know (you naughty naughty boy)), I was talking about storage).