Hydrogen, a Skeptic View
When we were kids we marveled over pictures with “identify the 10 differences” capture above it. Now that we are serious people, people with glasses and a deep frown, we instead marvel at discovering the flaws in reasoning. There we go:
[3:33]
Yeah right! The video compares electricity prices from a fully developed but dirty fossil fuel economy/grid with hydrogen prices from an almost non-existing hydrogen infrastructure. The video claims a price of $85 for 5 kg hydrogen or $17/kg. That’s like comparing the price of a liter of tap water with the price of a bottled water from the supermarket.
On world markets, the real price of bulk, industrial, fossil-based liquid hydrogen is far less: 2-3$/kg. Meanwhile hydrogen produced with electrolysis has become cost-competitive:
[carboncommentary.com] – Hydrogen made by the electrolysis of water is now cost-competitive and gives us another building block for the low-carbon economy
And the future is even better:
[deepresource] – Hydrogen Production – High Temperature Electrolysis
An expert from the hydrogen-production industry (electrolysis) in the link above predicts that in a few years the cost of electrolysis equipment will have come down to 500 euro/kW for 100 MW installations. That means that for 500 euro worth of equipment, you have a production capacity 1 kg hydrogen per hour. Assuming the economic life cycle to be in the order of a few years at least, we are talking about, say 3 x 365 x 24 = 26,280 hours = 26,280 kg of hydrogen. Which simply means that the cost of hydrogen-production will be negligible as compared to the cost of renewable electricity generation and storage and distribution cost of liquid hydrogen.
DeepResource 