Hydrogen won’t be $2-3 per kilogram by 2030. It’ll be much cheaper!
Hydrogen is the car fuel of the future. Just not our future.
But I’m sure in some alternate future Jack Nicholson is President and Australians are labouring in underground hydrogen mines to fill the transport blimps of the California Federation.
The cars in our future will run off boring old electricity stored in batteries rather than the gas that makes up most of the sun.1 If you want to change my mind about this, just get out there and start producing hydrogen cars. You’ll only need to make about 2.1 million to match electric vehicles produced last year. Let me know after you’ve made one every 15 seconds for 12 months so I can blog about it.
Unfortunately, some politicians haven’t got the message that hydrogen driving isn’t taking off. They expect Australia to be exporting billions of dollars of hydrogen to Asian car owners in the near future. In reality, we’ll have better luck powering Asian cars if we lay a transmission line from here to Singapore.
This doesn’t mean Australia won’t ever export hydrogen. It’s used in many industrial processes and could be useful for aviation. After all, the only thing lighter than hydrogen is no hydrogen. But there’s no hope of exporting trillions of litres a day. We’re not going to end up the Saudi Arabia of hydrogen. We’ll have to be satisfied with just being the Saudi Arabia of camels.
For hydrogen exports to take off it will have to beat the competition on price and, given the falling cost of batteries and renewable energy, that looks impossible for road transport. But there is some good news for hydrogen. A working paper by Longden, Jotzo, Prasad, and Andrews of the Australian National University came out last month with the title:
It says by 2030 hydrogen produced from renewable energy in Australia may cost $2-3 a kilogram. While there’s nothing drastically wrong with the paper and they clearly explain how they arrived at their conclusions, I do not agree with them. I find the idea of hydrogen costing $2-3 in 10 years time borders on the absurd.
I think it will be much cheaper.
“I am from the year 2030. Come with me if you want to electrolyse.”
Why So Cheap?
For two main reasons.
- The future cost of renewable energy will likely be lower than their estimates.
- The average cost of electricity used for hydrogen production will be even less as the electrolysers will be shut down when electricity prices are high and ramped up when they’re low.
To be fair, the authors clearly think the cost of renewable energy could be considerably less than the figures they use. But when you work for a university you’re expected to base your conclusions on other people’s work. It is frowned upon if you instead wave your hands in the air and say, “I think it will be different!” But I don’t represent a university, so I’m free to wave my hands around like Kermit the Frog.
The Cost Of Solar Power Is Falling Fast
The paper uses CSIRO estimates for the levelized cost of energy from Australian solar farms built in 2020. These costs range from 4.1 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s a lot cheaper than the cost of new coal power calculated using the same method. And for those who appreciate dark azure fields of blue, big solar has passed rooftop solar power on installed cost per watt.
Estimates of the future cost of solar farm electricity are shown in the graph from the paper below. They also looked at wind power, but I’ll just show the figures for large scale solar energy, since they came in cheaper:
The Levelised Cost Of Energy (LCOE) figures on the left are given in dollars per megawatt-hour. $25 per megawatt-hour is equal to 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.
A major problem with these estimates is they assume an interest rate of 8.5%. This was fine decades ago, but is unrealistically high now. A figure of 3% would be much better and even that may be too much. No one will let me borrow money at that rate, but my friend can despite the fact he looks kind of shifty. Using the old rate keeps things consistent with their past results, but I think they should just bite the bullet…
“I EAT bullets for BREAKFAST.”
Shut up, Arnie.
…and use a more realistic interest rate. It will result in significantly lower estimates for renewable energy costs.
Real Life Solar Is Cheap
But there’s no need to rely on estimates of the future cost of big solar. We can look at current costs and see they’re pretty damn cheap. In the United Arab Emirates, they are building a giant solar farm for only around 1.9 Australian cents per kilowatt-hour produced over 30 years. That’s less than it costs to squeeze energy out of an Australian coal power station even if the coal is almost free.2
While 1.9 cents is the cheapest I know of, it’s not a one-off freak event that will never be repeated. These sorts of prices will soon be repeating on us like my girlfriend’s last attempt at a curry vindaloo. The cheapest solar energy in the US was offered at 2.7 Australian cents per kilowatt-hour but they threw in battery storage as well, so it now comes to around 5.4 Australian cents per kilowatt-hour.
While it may take Australia a few years to catch up to the rest of the world, we will get there. And by the time we arrive solar power will have fallen even further in price. While there are limits to how cheap it’s likely to get, I have no problem believing by the time 2030 rolls around, a hydrogen producer will be able to have a solar farm built for under 2 cents per kilowatt-hour generated.
Rooftop Solar Power Also Helps
While big solar is coming down in price, that doesn’t mean rooftop solar stops making sense. Its output will continue to expand, placing downward pressure on electricity prices during the day. Rooftop solar power has an advantage over solar farms because it still makes sense to install no matter how low the wholesale price of electricity gets — even it it’s zero .
Thanks to big solar, small solar and wind power we can be confident that future daytime electricity prices will be very low.
Production Will Work Around High Electricity Prices
Estimates for energy costs in the paper are for the average amount of money a solar or wind farm needs to be paid per kilowatt-hour to be built. But hydrogen producers won’t actually pay these prices because they will shut down when electricity is expensive and ramp up when it’s cheap. A hydrogen production facility could build a solar farm and use most of the generation to make hydrogen, but sell to the grid when its price is high. This could be late in the afternoon, soon after sunrise in winter, on cloudy days, or any other time they can make more money from selling electricity than using it to make hydrogen. So the average cost of electricity used by hydrogen producers will lower than the average cost of electricity.
Large industrial users of energy, such as BHP or GLNG, pay the wholesale spot price for grid electricity, which is a lot less than we pay on household bills. Large hydrogen producers will be able to get a similar deal and take advantage of periods of low grid electricity prices.
Hydrogen Can Offset Emissions From Grid Energy
The drawback of using grid electricity is some may come from fossil fuels, so the hydrogen produced won’t be entirely green. But this is easily fixed. It’s not difficult to work out the carbon intensity of grid electricity at the time it’s used, so all that needs to be done is to purchase carbon credits — real ones, not fake ones — to offset the emissions to keep the hydrogen green. All they need to do is get on the phone — or since it will be the future it’s more likely to be this internet thing all the cool kids are talking about — and say:
“Hey, Vinnie! Ya got some carbon credits for me?”
“Yeah, sure. How many ya need?”
“About a thousand tonnes.”
“I can do that for ya. It’ll cost ya 70 K.”
“Ya breaking my balls, Vinnie. Ya breaking my balls here. You can give me a better deal than that.”
“Actually, carbon credits are a commodity and their price is set by a transparent market mechanism, backed up by audits and random inspections of carbon capture projects. So there is no room to move on their price and to keep our fees low we have a fixed, non-negotiable transaction charge.”
“I see your point and I appreciate you explaining it to me. You’re repairing my balls, Vinnie. You’ve repaired my balls.”
Because hydrogen producers can and will time their grid electricity use for when it is mostly renewable — or even all renewable — the total amount of carbon credits they will need to buy won’t be high.
Six Different Scenarios
The paper gives the cost of hydrogen production under six scenarios that depend upon:
- The capacity factor the hydrogen electrolysers are used at, and…
- The cost of the electrolysers.
Capacity Factors
The capacity factor is the percentage of time the electrolysers that produce hydrogen are run for. The paper considered three different amounts. These were chosen for stupid reasons, as they are based on capacity factor figures for solar farms, wind farms, and running an electrolyser off the grid but regularly shutting it down for maintenance:
- 30% capacity factor based on solar power.
- 45% capacity factor based on wind power.
- 90% capacity factor based on grid power.
In reality, businesses don’t work that way and the electrolyser capacity factor will be based on whatever makes them the most money.3 The capacity factor of wind and solar farms would only be an issue for off-grid hydrogen production and that’s not likely to occur on any large scale.4
While the reasons they used the two lower capacity figures don’t make a lot of sense, they are still useful. The 30% and 45% capacity factors can represent hydrogen producers that only use the lowest cost electricity available.
Hydrogen Electrolyser Costs
The paper uses two different costs for hydrogen electrolysers:
- $1,000 per kilowatt of capacity
- $500 per kilowatt of capacity
I don’t know enough to have any real opinion about the future cost of electroysers, so I am willing to run with their figures. While the world is not going to produce the vast amounts of hydrogen that would be required for road transport, so much money is going into hydrogen research I have no trouble believing they could get down to $500 a kilowatt.
The Hydrogen Cost Graph
The cost of hydrogen per kilogram with the three different capacity factors and two different electrolyser costs are shown in a graph below. However, because I believe that in 2030 the cost of electricity used by large hydrogen producers will average around 2 cents per kilowatt-hour or less, I have put a red line through the graph at that point:
The paper tentatively says hydrogen prices could approach $2 a kilogram by 2030. If they instead pay an average of around 2 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity they use, then the cost of hydrogen per kilogram with an electrolyser capacity factor of 45% would be:
- $1,000 per kilowatt electrolyser cost — $2 per kilogram
- $500 per kilowatt electrolyser cost — $1.40 per kilogram
Since I suspect electrolysers will fall in price and/or have higher efficiency than the 69% assumed in the paper,5 I think the lower price is more likely.
My Hydrogen Price Prediction
I also think it’s possible by 2030 that the electricity used by hydrogen producers — which is different from the average wholesale spot price — will average significantly under 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, further reducing the cost of hydrogen. However, there is a lot of uncertainty because prediction is difficult, especially when it comes to the future, so I am going to add a lot of wriggle room into my prediction, which is:
For large industrial hydrogen production that gets underway around 2030, the maximum production cost of hydrogen will be around $2 per kilogram in today’s money. The actual production cost is likely to be under $1.50 and — if we’re lucky — it will be around $1 per kilogram.
Cheaper Than Hydrogen From Coal
The paper says the CSIRO cost estimate for hydrogen produced from coal in the future is at least $2.27 a kilogram, so no one should want to do that if my prediction is right. But note the CSIRO figure is pretty low considering a trial coal-to-hydrogen plant in Victoria is producing it for $165,000 per kilogram.
Is $1-2 A Kilogram Hydrogen Cheap Enough?
My prediction for the cost of hydrogen is low, but it won’t matter if there are even cheaper alternatives available.
If hydrogen is $2 per kilogram then since it contains 120 megajoules of energy,6 the cost per gigajoule is $16.68. If the cost of hydrogen is $1 per kilogram then it comes to $8.34 per gigajoule.
The reason why I am giving the cost per gigajoule is that it’s how natural gas is sold. At the moment it’s $4.24 per gigajoule in Sydney:
That’s almost half the cost of hydrogen at $1 per kilogram.
Despite the fact Australia is a major natural gas exporter, current prices overseas are even lower than this:
- Europe $3.90 per gigajoule
- Singapore $2.40 per gigajoule
If you are wondering why we have higher prices here in Australia, there is a good reason why large companies charge us more for gas. It’s because they can.7
High Gas Prices May Never Return
As the world economy recovers from our inability to keep cooties to ourselves, we can expect the price of natural gas to rise. But I think its average price is likely to remain under $10 per gigajoule and we are unlikely to return to the days of high world gas prices we saw earlier this century for two main reasons:
- There is now far more international gas export capacity than in the past, increasing supply and competition.
- The falling cost of renewable energy — especially solar energy — is reducing the demand for natural gas. Not just for electricity generation, but also heating and industry.
By the time 2030 rolls around I suspect natural gas will be cheap compared to the average over the past 10 years, so hydrogen may have a hard time competing with it.8
Natural Gas Emissions Can Be Offset
A major drawback of burning natural gas is it creates CO2 and we have too much of that in the atmosphere already. Also, natural gas is mostly methane, which is a greenhouse gas around 34 times more powerful than CO2 when measured over a century. If just 1% of natural gas leaks into the atmosphere before it’s burned it is a serious problem.
A gigajoule of natural gas weighs 18 kilograms. When burned it combines with oxygen to create 50 kilograms of CO2. It’s possible to remove this CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it long term to make natural gas as green as renewably produced hydrogen. So for hydrogen to be competitive it would have to be cheaper than the cost of natural gas plus the cost of offsetting its emissions by capturing and sequestering the CO2 released — plus extra to make up for methane leaks.
The Cost Of Emission-Offset Natural Gas
I think a reasonable estimate of what it may cost to remove CO2 from the atmosphere long-term on a large scale is around $70 a tonne.9 That’s 7 cents a kilogram, so removing the CO2 produced by burning one gigajoule of CO2 will cost $3.43. If 1% of natural gas leaks into the atmosphere10 then compensating for that raises the cost to $3.87.
If we add the cost of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions to the current cost of natural gas in Sydney it comes to $8.11 per gigajoule which is less than a gigajoule of hydrogen that costs only $1 per kilogram to produce.
If the cost of producing hydrogen is $2 a kilogram then the price of natural gas can be $12.80 a gigajoule and it will still be cheaper to use it instead and offset its emissions. I think there’s an excellent chance the price of natural gas will never have an annual average that high ever again.
Alternatively, if you think my estimate of the cost of offsetting CO2 emissions and methane leakage is way too optimistic and believe it will be twice as high, then natural gas at $8.93 a gigajoule will still be cheaper than hydrogen that costs $2 per kilogram to produce.
Hydrogen Has Some Challenges
To be competitive with emission offset natural gas, hydrogen not only has to be cheaper per gigajoule it also has to be cheaper after other disadvantages are factored in. These include:
- Hydrogen is more difficult and costly to liquefy for transport — on the other hand, once that’s done it’s much lighter.
- Due to hydrogen embrittlement and corrosion, most existing natural gas infrastructure can’t use hydrogen and only a modest amount can be added to natural gas before it starts causing problems.
- Some safety issues, including hydrogen burning with a mostly colourless flame that can make it hard to see.11
- If used to reduce iron in steelmaking, one gigajoule of hydrogen will remove 67 kilograms of oxygen from iron ore while one gigajoule of natural gas will remove 72 kilograms of oxygen, giving natural gas a modest advantage.
- Hydrogen that leaks into the atmosphere reduces the breakdown rate of methane and so acts as a mild greenhouse gas. Because hydrogen is the leakiest of all gases this can’t realistically be stopped and can only be minimized.
Given how cheap electricity is likely to be, I expect homes and businesses will give up using burnable gas altogether, rather than line up to buy hydrogen stoves and Hindenberg hot water systems. When it comes to electricity generation, rather than buy hydrogen tolerant turbines or use hydrogen fuel cells, it should usually make more economic sense to use low-cost batteries combined with cheap renewables.
We Should Export Emission-Offset Natural Gas
Even though I think hydrogen may be produced at a much lower cost than the sensible people who wrote the paper suggest, it still may not compete with the cost of natural gas plus offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions. If hydrogen may have trouble competing even if it comes in at my optimistic estimate, then why the hell is our government funding hydrogen research when could start exporting emission offset natural gas right now?
The answer to that is, the government would rather sink vast amounts of money into researching a possible solution than admit that our third largest export kills people. Since our second-largest export — coal — also kills people, I think we should really be cutting back on the amount of killing the stuff we sell causes. We put warnings on cigarette packets and charge taxes to cover its health costs, so I don’t see why fossil fuels should be any different.
Australia Can Be A Low-Cost Producer Of “Green” Natural Gas
At the moment there appear to be 5 main things that give a country an advantage when it comes to capturing and sequestering carbon emissions. These are:
- Stable and trustworthy government.
- A large agricultural sector.
- Transportation networks such as roads, railways, ports, and navigable rivers — we have the first three.
- Land
- Ocean
I know it’s hard to believe, but Australia actually has number 1. While the place seems like a nuthouse from the inside, when you look at the rest of the world we’re actually doing quite well. In the southern hemisphere the competition basically comes down to New Zealand and we have more of the other numbers.
There are methods of capturing and sequestering carbon Australia can start immediately and we can also use renewable energy certificates (LGCs) currently created as part of our Renewable Energy Target scheme to offset emissions.12 Australia could easily become the Saudi Arabia of — no, that’s not right — Australia could easily become the Australia of emission offset natural gas.
We have been stupid to spend so much money researching hydrogen which only has the potential to be low carbon energy export in the future, when we could be exporting emission offset natural gas right now. Instead of paying money to research hydrogen production, we should be encouraging other countries to pay us for carbon-neutral natural gas.
If selling 100% emission offset natural gas is difficult at first, we can start off easy:
“Hey, Japan! You want 10% of your natural gas imports to be carbon neutral, don’t you?”
“Yo! South Korea! You’re not going to let the Japanese beat you, are you? You’ll go for 15% emission offset natural gas, right?”
That’s how you do business. Exploit lingering hostility and racism.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t produce and export hydrogen if it looks like a moneymaker, but we can let other countries spend the money developing it. It’s not as if getting a head start is going to help us. It will be produced where large companies believe it will make them the most money.
Emission-offset natural gas is cheaper than hydrogen right now and, if predictions by people who aren’t crazy are correct, it may be cheaper for decades to come. The infrastructure required for its transport and use already exists, so there’s no chicken and egg problem as with hydrogen. We should take advantage of the opportunity that emission-offset natural gas exports offer and shouldn’t waste time and money on something that may be a pipe dream. Specifically, a fluorinated ethylene propylene pipe to prevent hydrogen embrittlement.
Footnotes
- Since we’ll use a lot of solar energy to charge those batteries, in a roundabout way, hydrogen will be supplying it. Of course, in an even more roundabout way, that’s also true for petrol and diesel. ↩
- Many Australian power stations use stranded coal which is, effectively, almost free. Coal is stranded if it has no other economical use. This applies to Victoria’s brown coal, Western Australia’s kind of blackish coal, and — due to falling world demand — a number of black coal mines without rail access to coal terminals. ↩
- I find that academics often lack an understanding of both business and international energy trading markets. However, by peeling potatoes in my parent’s catering business, I was magically granted the knowledge I claim they lack by the free enterprise fairy. ↩
- There are people talking about producing hydrogen off any major Australian grid in the Northern Territory, but the intention there is to use a loooooooong cable to connect to the Indonesian, Singaporean, and Malaysian grids. ↩
- Right now electrolysers can have an efficiency well above 69%, but hydrogen producers won’t necessarily use the highest efficiency electrolysers. They’ll use whatever provides the lowest cost overall. If the cost of electricity they use is very low then — depending on what happens with electrolyser technology — they should have an incentive to use cheaper, less efficient, electrolysers. ↩
- This is the Lower Heating Value or LHV of hydrogen. The Higher Heating Value or HHV is 142 megajoules per kilogram, but LHV is the more relevant and appropriate figure to use. ↩
- There are good reasons and bad reasons why natural gas costs so much in Australia and it would take me a lot of time to untangle them. My advice is — screw natural gas. Get a large solar power system, go all-electric, and disconnect from the gas line so you’ll no longer have to pay them money again and you’ll reduce the amount of methane leaking to the atmosphere from domestic gas lines. ↩
- Yes, this does mean politicians who claim we can have a gas led recovery are idiots. Alternatively, if they knowingly want to spend tax payer’s money on something that kills taxpayers, they are evil. ↩
- Potential low-cost methods of CO2 capture and sequestration involve turning plant matter into charcoal and burying it, dumping plant matter at the edge of the continental shelf so it is covered in sediment, and mucking around with various types of rocks. ↩
- A leakage rate of 1% or less may seem optimistically low, but I if gas companies were charged for their leaks, as I am suggesting, I think the amount would suddenly magically decrease. ↩
- But there are some safety advantages as well. Because hydrogen is so light it will collect near the ceiling and the distribution of humans is statistically greater close to the floor. Of course, if enough hydrogen builds up, this can happen but methane can have much the same effect. ↩
- Since renewable energy mostly displaces coal generation, Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) at their current price of $48 should currently reduce emissions at a lower cost than my $70 per tonne of CO2 figure. ↩
About Ronald Brakels
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Why do we need to spend big on Solar Farms and the accompanying infrastructure (power lines & switching gear) when we already have thousands of hectares of roof space and the infrastructure already in place?
Surely a group of engineers, bean counters, installers, marketers and pollies could draft up an acceptable plan to achieve power for all, using what we already have with a bit of tweaking.
Of course they could! But then they’d all be out of work! And that, after all, is the first priority. Without all the haggling and avoiding of endless practicalities and basic/cheap solutions how could the Solarquotes staff make a living? eg. A few years ago a couple of Melb. Uni. kids were running around for months in a Falcon running on on-board hydron. From memory they got two mentions on this blog and then were quietly buried. Since then this blog has been running on hot air quibbling.
Figure 1 title – LOCE…?
Great article – but it’s going to take me quite a while to digest – a lot of ideas and details…
Ooops! I got the letter order the way round wrong there! Corrected now, thanks.
At 3 cents a KW feed in tariff in WA lots of people will be looking at ways to generate their own hydrogen at home.
As always, an informative and thought-provoking article, leavened by a welcome dash of humour. But, as someone who is by nature both too thick and too lazy to tease apart your arguments, I am left wondering what is probably on the minds of those you criticise: namely, what sort of track record does this fellow (substitute pejorative noun of your choice) Brakels have when it comes to making similar economic projections?
Here’ your chance, Ronald!
Simple answer Jeff; this idea of yours is not commercially viable.
But despite that, I commend your passion and interest in speaking up about energy technology science moving forward.
Lawrence Coomber
Michael: “At 3 cents a KW feed in tariff in WA lots of people will be looking at ways to…. ”
“…ditch STATE Labor at the next election…”
…and…
“…vote Green, to force a Labor/Green coalition…”*
State Labor’s actions have been rabidly anti-solar for years now.
Our tenants _still_ haven’t been paid what they’re owed.
Sadly, the LNP-WA appear to have lost-the-plot in regards to solar, despite
having previously initiated the most forward-thinking renewable scheme
in Australia.
* Despite Death Duties embedded in the Green manifesto… .
Ronald,
You state:
“Given how cheap electricity is likely to be, I expect homes and businesses will give up using burnable gas altogether, rather than line up to buy hydrogen stoves and Hindenberg hot water systems.”
Heat pumps are already much more energy efficient and already significantly cheaper than fossil gas.
See my comment: https://johnquiggin.com/2020/09/01/hydrogen/#comment-227360
You also state:
“Emission-offset natural gas is cheaper than hydrogen right now and, if predictions by people who aren’t crazy are correct, it may be cheaper for decades to come.”
Per BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, USA was the world’s largest oil producer (at 17.9% global share) but with an estimated proved R/P of only 11.1 years, and the world’s largest gas producer (23.1% global share) but with an estimated proved R/P of only 14.0 years.
In many cases, gas is a byproduct of oil extraction.
It’s unlikely oil (and gas) will ever return to 2018/19 production levels. Petroleum geologist Art Berman states:
“A huge supply surplus in the first half of the year is expected to give way to a smaller yet significant supply deficit in the second half. A 2.25 to 2.50 mmb/d supply deficit in the second half of the year is not an energy crisis but it does suggest higher oil prices are ahead.”
See: https://www.artberman.com/2020/09/03/stop-expecting-oil-and-the-economy-to-recover/
If we/humanity don’t rapidly reduce our oil and gas dependency, the evidence I see suggests oil and gas prices will likely rise soon.
And broadcast recently on the ABC The Science Show, Professor Johan Rockström said:
“Time is also running out. The window to avoid major catastrophes is still open. But only barely. During the next decade, global emissions must be cut by half and we must halt the loss of species on Earth. That’s the reason. That’s the basic justification for declaring a state of planetary emergency.”
See: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/window-closing-for-action-to-stabilise-the-earth%E2%80%99s-climate/12606342
So, I see a ‘Great Reset’ looming, whatever we/humanity do.
If the fall in natural gas use we both expect occurs due to demand destruction then natural gas prices will be low. If it instead happens due to a lack of supply prices will be high and hydrogen gas will look like a more attractive substitute.
Buongiorno, mi chiedo se nel prossimo futuro, pochi anni, arriveremo alla produzione di idrogeno pulito diffuso utilizzando l’ impianto fotovoltaico sul tetto di casa. Questo eviterebbe la costruzione di nuove infrastrutture di distribuzione. Inoltre si potrebbero costituire comunità di produzione per esempio quelle condominiali o di piccole comunità sul territorio. Questo si potrebbe fare in particolare nel Sud Italia, Io sono Calabrese e so quanta energia solare arriva ogni anno su un metro quadrato disuperficie. Il costo degli impianti fotovoltaici è in continua decrescita per le ragioni note a tutti quelli che si occupano di rinnovabili, inoltre l’ efficienza dei pannelli è in continua crescita, a breve si arriverà al 30 % con la tecnologia della start up Svizzera Insolight e passeremo il limite di Shockley-Queisser del 33 % con le miscele silicio peroviskite. In realtà esistono già dei moduli con efficienza superiore al 50 % impiegati nel settore aerospaziale, il loro costo al momento non ne permette l’ impiego negli impianti di generazione elettrica, entro qualche anno potrebbero essere impiegati nel settore auto per generare energia e diminuire i costi di esercizio. Solo dopo il costo potrebbe calare a livelli interessanti per gli impianti di generazione elettrica. Tornando al tema iniziale, abbiamo già dei generatori a idrogeno che producono acqua calda e potenza elettrica mediante le celle a combustibile. Con un accumulo di idrogeno si potrebbe arrivare alla completa autonomia energetica. Non avremmo più bisogno di una fornitura elettrica, pertanto annulleremmo la bolletta che mediamente vale 1000 euro/anno e non avremmo più bisogno di metano o pellet o legname per scaldarci in inverno e quindi elimineremmo circa 1000 / 1500 euro a seconda della grandezza dell’ immobile e della zona climatica. Prima di fare quanto sopra si dovrebbe efficientare l’ immobile, cambiare porte e finestre, eliminare eventuali ponti termici e umidità di risalita nei muri. Questi interventi oggi possono essere fatti con il cosiddetto ecobonus 110 %, bisogna affidarsi ad aziende serie con esperienza e tecnici qualificati. L’ intervento di efficientamento deve far guadagnare 2 classi energetiche e dove non è possibile, quella migliore. Ogni immobile è un caso a sé pertanto non esiste la ricetta magica che vale dappertutto. Per coloro che non vogliono soluzioni con idrogeno, le pompe di calore accoppiate all’ impianto fotovoltaico e ad un accumulo elettrico potrebbe essere una buona opzione, in particolar modo quando si può fare il riscaldamento a pavimento. Inoltre si può installare una colonnina di ricarica per l’ auto elettrica. Ho conseguito la laurea in ing. meccanica a Pisa nel 1982 con una tesi su idrogeno pulito e rinnovabili in collaborazione con Enel. Vorrei ricordare il relatore l’esimio prof. Dino Dini che aveva lavorato al Jet Propultion Laboratory di Pasadena NASA per diversi anni dove di idrogeno e rinnovabili ne aveva visto tante. A Pisa aveva la cattedra di macchine e quella di missilistica. Saluti Antonio Saullo
Penso che avrebbe molto più senso utilizzare batterie domestiche per lo stoccaggio di energia e produrre idrogeno centralmente.
(I think it would make much more sense to use home batteries for energy storage and produce hydrogen centrally.)
My view is that electrolysing water to make hydrogen is a total waste of energy. Water is pretty stable stuff and, of course, knocking those atoms apart takes a lot more energy than is returned by burning the hydrogen.
By 2030 I think we’ll probably have either the next generation of cheap, efficient and possibly solid state battery technology, or, if we’re really lucky, some breakthrough in nuclear fusion/plasma systems (which if it occurs, will make energy costs something which very few people will need to worry about). Either of these things would make hydrogen completely irrelevant.
As owners of six solar electricity systems, we’d agree that heat pumps are worthwhile… but we do wish we’d known how damned _noisy_ heat pumps are! We’d have bought into a seventh SES, instead.
Ahhh, wait-a-bit… . 3c FiT? Nope.
What we really need is leadership with vision:
https://www.watoday.com.au/business/small-business/electrify-everything-cannon-brookes-calls-for-east-west-solar-cables-to-power-australia-20200907-p55t59.html
Unlikely to happen in WA, where coal and gas are worshipped… and 19th-century poles’n’wires are sacrosanct.
Lessor,
You state:
“As owners of six solar electricity systems, we’d agree that heat pumps are worthwhile… but we do wish we’d known how damned _noisy_ heat pumps are!”
How much “noisy”, Lessor?
Some brands of heat pumps are noisier than others.
It’s best to keep them away from bedrooms (including the neighbour’s bedrooms). If coupling them with solar-PV then they would be mainly running during the day.
I have a Sanden Eco® Plus Hot Water Heat Pump with a noise level of 37 dB. It normally begins operating during the day from 10am (standard time), taking advantage of the output of my 3.2 kW solar-PV system (subject to irradiance levels), and runs daily (for about 1.75 to 2.5 hours in summer, or for 3.25 to 4 hours in winter) to recharge the hot water storage tank. If the ambient temperature drops below freezing, the unit will periodically run for about 15 to 20 minutes to prevent the water freezing in the insulated circulation pipes and the outdoor unit’s water heat exchanger. IMO, my heat pump unit’s operating noise level is barely noticeable unless within about 10 metres (unobstructed), and I wouldn’t describe my heat pump unit as being noisy.
See: https://www.sanden-hot-water.com.au/how-a-sanden-heat-pump-system-works
How noisy, Geoff?
The heatpump we installed can be heard all over our ten-acre property.
It’s a dull rumbling vibration which intrudes on the otherwise peaceful calm of our forested location.
If you want to hear something as ominous, just load Mad Max 2, that classic Aussie road film… (or the less successful Steel Dawn, in which US film makers attempted to duplicate those disturbing soundfx.) It really isn’t all that difficult imagining war-painted, crossbow-waving anarchists or antiChrist bikers thundering through our firebreaks in red-hot pursuit of Max & Co… .
OK, it came with a timer. The manufacturers _knew_ it would rapidly drive users to a new apocalypse. Resetting it after increasingly-common power failures is a pain… and replacing the lengthy sacrificial anode rod is an expensive chore. Has it saved us money, switching from gas? Probably has, but solar panels would have been a far better choice (in WA’s pre-Labor past, anyway!)
I agree with you completely Lessor.
While there are some specific fringe aspects of the Green’s policies I don’t fully agree with, one thing I am very confident of, is that the Green’s would never knowingly and deliberately set out to endorse or implement activities and policies which could well ultimately lead to the pollution and ruin of the entire planet, including Australia, with immense loss of human life.
I’m quite content to remain alive so I can debate with the Greens any issues I might have with other fringe aspects.
Death Duties seem to me a fringe problem too at present. History tends to suggest these are ineffective at raising amounts of any significance, due in part to the mere fact that individuals have an entire lifetime to devise some plan to avoid them completely. We did have them at one time, and that’s one of the reasons they eventually fell out of favour so far as tax revenue raising was concerned. They are simply ‘inefficient’.
Another problem for Government is ‘timing’. of their receipt, and how to match that against ‘timing’ of needed expenditure. A large number of random factors are around. e.g Ronald B might be a happy resident of Adelaide at the moment, but then, quite unexpectedly he has to flee Australia to escape the Wrath of Finn due to smashing up his beautiful Tesla while driving it, and he takes all his substantial assets with him.
So that kind of thing can really mess up revenue projections and budget planning regarding outlays.
There’s talk too of a GST rate increase, or alternatively, leaving the rate as it is but removing many of the exemptions that currently apply. The exempt goods do include some food, healthcare and housing items, and slapping a 10% price increase on those would not go down well politically.
Increasing the rate of GST and not fiddling with any other changes is effectively increasing prices at a time when demand is falling or low, and is the complete opposite of stimulating activity. That’s over-simplifying things, but you can see the potential difficulties with doing that.
Some excellent points made, Des.
We haven’t voted Green for many years, but as climate crises increase, we may shelve our anxieties about death duties, in favour of a living planet.
The current warped solar perceptions our STATE Labor premier clutches (just as fiercely as Morrison lovingly polishes his lump of coal) can really only be explained by one or more of the following:
* His worship of a south-west coal-mining town
* His hatred of a previous government which rewarded clean solar
electricity
* His defence of an archaic, crumbling 19th-century, dangerous
poles-and-wire electricity system
* His fear of V2G technology and improving battery storage technologies
reducing our dependence on the state’s electricity cash-cow monopoly
* His belief that WA border closure means voters will confer immunity.
It’s unlikely to be, as some have argued, that solar electricity FiTs are middle-class welfare; that only the wealthy can afford solar panels. Our experience fighting Synergy and Consumer Protection, demonstrates that this Labor STATE government cares little for the single-income, sole-parent, lowly-paid regional _female_ tenants cheated of their FiT rebate entitlements, during the last two years.
Maybe it’s time to don a billboard and haunt the voting booths come the Ides of March… .
Ha ha. An excellent summary of the defects with our electoral aristocracy, and the Party system.
We’re approaching the point where we might decide to try genuine, representative, constant, real-time democracy.
https://youtu.be/12V9rV_bp_M
A very interesting article. I definitely agree that hydrogen will not have an easy road versus natural gas. When H2 is burned, it doesn’t make economic sense to compete with natural gas, the latter is always cheaper in combustion applications (example: use in gas turbines). However, it is necessary to do the analysis of the energy efficiency of H2 with respect to natural gas in specific applications or end uses other than combustion, for example fuel cell vehicles. Remember that the efficiency of H2, when used as an electrical energy precursor, gives greater efficiency than the use of natural gas and its conversion from thermal to electrical energy!
If solar was 19 cents a kilowatt hour, 10 years ago, is now 1.9 cents a kilowatt hour, then it will be 0.19 cents a kilowatt hour in ten years time. I don’t know why we have to be so vastly pessimistic about price reductions, the trend has been great and accelerating for decades. Then there’s the nothing can change pessimism, the US, went from the world’s largest energy importer, to an exporter in a decade. China’s rail system went to high speed rail in it’s trunk, core high capacity lines in a decade, Australia became the largest exporter of cryogenic LNG, in a decade.
After the Spanish flu, we had the roaring twenties, where horseless carriages replaced horse drawn carriages, electricity replaced gas, in lighting; there have been Singaporean, Japanese, Chinese economic miracles. Yet, when we just had over half of our electricity, come from renewable energy and Western Australia, could give us peak hour electricity to the east coast. We refuse to believe that renewable energy, is the cheapest form of energy, unable to read a simple trend line. 1st, 2nd, 3rd industrial revolutions, cheap energy, transportation and food, with renewable electricity cheapest and declining fast, why wouldn’t we have an industrial revolution, how is this different from the last 2.
If we’re not using 25 times as much power, in 10 years time, when solar power is likely to be 1/10th of the price, then economics, engineering and physics would have to be Completely different, to my understanding. Yes hydrogen, is a great aircraft fuel, it’s also a great shipping and power storage fuel. Apply electricity, desalinate water, apply electricity, electrolyse water, apply electricity, cryogenically liquefy hydrogen. Solid state transistorised power, no moving parts, no inputs after construction, sea water is rather plentiful. It’s readily available, for shipping tankers, no mining required, no transportation to port required, it’s not 100% efficient, it’s never ever needed to be, it’s only needed to be cheap. At 0.19 cents a kilowatt hour, in 2030, that’s vastly more cheap, than is required.
I have a plan for Australia’s hydrogen exporting industry:
1. Wait a few decades until a number of companies in other countries have established the industry;
2. Wait a bit longer as efficiencies and practices are improved globally, thus reducing demand for hydrogen imports to the client countries;
3. Jump on the bandwagon at the most stable and predictable section of the demand curve, when only Australia, with it’s natural solar resources, is the only country able to make a few cents, and indeed a very meagre profit.
You’re welcome.
Hi Stuart
Following your argument further – are you implying if we wait for 20 years, then solar generation will comedown to 0.019 cents/kWh? Or, 100 kWh for 2 cents.
Seems unreasonably optimistic to me – seems to fly in the face of typical product life-cycles.
My experience with automotive component manufacture, is that unit costs come down to raw material cost primarily, with only a very small cost to amortise tooling (e.g. a few cents per component), and for the very small component of labour cost when high levels of automation are applied.
I don’t think I agree with your implication that raw material costs will eventually become negligible – if anything, they are likely to increase over time.
Remember, that panels will need to be replaced periodically (unless or until infinite life panels are developed), and I doubt recycling old panels will be 100% efficient, nor have near-zero cost.
Being optimistic is great – but I do feel this needs to be moderated with reality.
I should point out that projections based on ‘current state of affairs’ and ‘technological trends’ may well all get completely blown out of the water in these times, by any number of things.
For example – if COVID 19 morphs into another more virulent strain, then there could well be quite a lot less people around to consume electricity, or anything at all for that matter, and any ‘economic stimulus’ may then only be useful for increasing the supply of dried bread crusts with nothing else on them.
Might be wise to temper the technological enthusiasm a bit
Hi a few years ago 10 or more a young scientist at Swinburne Tech patented a carbon nanotube battery that had huge potential for storage density and cycle life.
Not to mention the recycling advantages, I assume it was either purchased by existing company with interests in suppressing the tech until they have exhausted the profit in the current technology or shelved due to lack of Australian venture capital to secure development.
My question is, have you heard what happened to it?
Ron,
excellent article:
talking about $2/kg obscures the fact that we are really talking about a gas substitute costing circa $14/GJ before we compress/liquefy/transport/store and retail the stuff.
in other words, it is expensive stuff
long term domestic gas forecasts are for $8-$10GJ (wholesale, including transportation) although of course, one has to factor in a carbon tax over the longer term
in the short term (ie before 2030), there is no way in hell we are going to be commissioning electrolysers at $1000/kW. to get there, we need the Europeans to have invested in the tech and the Chinese to ramp up the mass production of said tech.
but we will get there on the tech cost. and the cost of the input energy will come down.
on the other hand the practicality (ie cost efficiency) of carbon sequestration is debatable.
H2 will have its day.
just not yet
and frankly, tossing $70m around of taxpayers’ money is a waste of time. let the big boys build here once the cost of the kit has come down overseas.
I don’t know the chemistry behind this, but why isn’t hydrogen combined with alcohol? (making this up / speculating) So that hydrogenated alcohol composed of (remember making this up) say 50% alcohol and 50% hydrogen, which would make a sane (????) stable fuel something akin to the napthalates or aether….. It makes sense, it’s a nice, safe, energy dese fuel that burns like mad, as a ultra high octane fuel, without the hassles of pure hydrogen.
Well, Shane
Alcohols have carbon in their chemical formulae – so burning this in any form is going to make CO2 emissions. The whole idea of burning hydrogen ( or better yet, using it a fuel cell), is that the emissions are only H2O (water!).
I also don’t think napthalates are high octane – quite the contrary, they have high cetane ratings – good for easy compression ignition, not what you want for high compression spark ignition engines.
Ether (not aether – which was once thought to fill the universe!) IS an octane booster.
But, both also contain large quantities of carbon atoms in their chemical structure.
Shane,
You state:
“I don’t know the chemistry behind this, but why isn’t hydrogen combined with alcohol?”
It’s doable, but it’s a much more expensive option (energetically and monetarily) as a net-zero/low GHG emissions energy solution for land transport.
Overall efficiencies for renewable electricity generated through to that energy dissipated at the road wheels to do useful work for equivalent mass vehicles (per Transport & Environment):
• Battery-Electric Vehicles: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 73%;
• Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicles: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _22%;
• Power2Liquid Hydrocarbon Fuels-Internal Combustion Engine V’s: 13%.
See: https://twitter.com/transenv/status/899976235794788352?lang=en
Hm.
That might be good fun, especially if it makes a load of noise like existing engines, but there’s no need to set fire to stuff any longer. If that’s what we decide we want.
:-O
😉
There was a lot of talk about Green Hydrogen at the https://www.smartenergyexpo.org.au/
Well worth a visit (The talks are recorded, & avail for ~30 days.)
There was mention of Sustainable energy using 1.7% of Aust area!
Much talk about Ammonia, & VPPs.
Where do they get this 2 cents per kilowatt. Household electricity is 28 cents per kilowatt.
Household electricity is charged per kWh (energy) in NT and WA, and not per kW (power). The accounting would be very tricky to charge for power, and I can’t see how it would work.
I think you might be confusing kW and kWh.
Great article, but a few points not discussed:
1. Natural gas won’t solve long haul air travel. This may not be an issue until well after 2030 when Hydrogen (or mix) should fill the gap. I can’t think of anything else that would work.
2. Nobody has implemented a cost effective carbon capture system to date. Unless you consider reforestation, which isn’t happening anyway.
3. Renewables will continue to drop in price until the point where overbuild makes sense. Perhaps 2 – 5 times overbuild. The excess energy will be essentially free.
4. Don’t discount learning by doing for large cost reductions of electrolysers. How wrong have predictions been for solar and batteries costs ?
The use of electric cars supports the bigger picture, which must include GH2. Without green electricity the biggest producers of carbon dioxide are power plants and factories. Developing GH2 for these markets is critical to becoming carbon neutral. The 2 technologies must exist in parallel with trucks using mixed fuels including GH2 until economical to jump to pure hydrogen or electric.
Cars have a great head start with electric batteries, so why don’t they build interchangeable battery packs that allow a swap and go, like gas bottles for our BBQ’s? Should hydrogen fuel cells become more cost effective they will challenge battery vehicles. Australia is well positioned with competing green options, each technology has its benefits.
Disclaimer: Nil affiliations with GH2 or RTS companies but I do have 31 panels on my roof!