Its difficult to castigate R & D projects because they are required to develop future technologies, universities, industrial apllications etc.

Does anybody know how much Federal funds were alloted to Fuel Cells + Hydrogen R & D versus PHEV + BEVs advanced batteries development in the last 10 years?

The most important hydrogen development is to make a low cost electrolyzer for large scale production of hydrogen. That alone could solve the problem of daily and seasonal intermittency for most renewable energy in particular wind turbines. Hydrogen is easy to store in massive quantity underground in natural geologic reservoirs and it can be used when needed for peek power or seasonal changes.

Wind power is ready to be deployed immediately for up to 20% of the electricity at very competitive prices to all other alternatives including coal and nuclear. With a low cost electrolyzer we could do 100% of all electric generation with wind power. No need for dirty coal or spread of nuclear doomsday technology to every corner of the world. Something that is likely to cost us dearly one unfortunate day in the history of mankind. Besides wind power does not use sparse water resources as does coal and nuclear energy.

Hydrogen could have a future as a large scale and affordable storage medium for renewable energy. However, I doubt it will be important for vehicle propulsion in any foreseeable future if ever. At the time they are ready with hydrogen technology for cars we will know how to produce a 500 Wh / kg battery or capasitator at less than $100 per kWh and then hydrogen for vehicle propulsion will no longer make sense.

To conclude, focus on the electrolyzer.

Bob: I agree that some of this money might be better spent right now subsidizing battery technology development, it may not be all that necessary. If gasoline goes to US $6/gal, and natural gas keeps rising, batteries will look much more attractive even at current costs. You will see production ramp ups that will make the railroad building boom of the 1860's look like small potatoes. And costs will come down.

Henrik may also be correct, however. Wind has already reached a tipping point in terms of cost, and solar will within the next five years (at current gas prices). At that point hydrogen or other storage will be the challenge.

Generation IV Nuclear Reactors

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf77.html

This technology will spearhead the hydrogen economy. If you are anti nuke then hydrogen is not for you.

As a point of comparison consider the following:

A hydrogen price estimate from gen IV nuclear

General Atomics predicts that hydrogen produced in a High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) would cost $1.53/kg. In 2003, steam reforming of natural gas yielded hydrogen at $1.40/kg. At 2005 gas prices, hydrogen cost $2.70/kg. At 2008 gas prices it is much more by a large margin.

Renewable cost estimate is as follows:

Estimated cost for Solar High-Temperature Electrolysis is now about five times the cost of current natural gas reforming, Which is the average price of other renewable processes.

Your statement as follows:

You would have to liquify million tons of H2 for the storage that would require huge reservoir because of the low density of H2 4 time bigger than reservoir used to store gasoline) the domestic fresh water consumption would double. The energy sunk in the liquefaction and transport of H2 would further sink the EROI figure. Is that realistic ?

My response as follows:

Efficiency dictates that liquefaction must be avoided in preference of existing NG pipeline distribution either using gaseous H2 or syngas manufactured from H2.

As an engineering precept, the utilization side of the technology should be directed by the most efficient production method that is selected.

The time that Gen IV nuke/hydrogen technology is available is a result of political will and capital investment (i.e. the often referenced Manhattan project).

@wintermane

Prove it

night time power for less then 4 cents per kwh

It is not the minimum price of electrify that proves hydrogen production cost; it is the average market price over a given time frame. If you can give me that number for any given market I’ll be impressed.

If you know and have the time, compare and contrast the thermo chemical method against your preferred method in terms of cost and efficiency.

I agree with pierre doussiere that the liquefaction, storage, and transport of hydrogen is impractical.

Compare and contrast your preferred logistical method with the NG pipeline approach I described in my first post in term of efficiency and cost.

The amount of capital to replace fossil fuel with hydrogen is unimaginable. Can you give more detail about the titanic group that you refer to, and what business plan they will use to make the transition?

H2 skeptics,

It will be very likely that future automobiles will consume much less energy than currently. Toyota is working on reducing the weight of the future Prius to less than 1/2 that of today. Coupling with highly efficient fuel cells and hybrid electric drive train like in the Honda FCX at 60% efficiency (3x the efficiency of today's ICE), then energy consumption can be reduced to 1/5 of today for the same number of private vehicles. Trucks and ships can also be converted to H2 as well. Trains can be electrified and powered in part by wind turbines along the track.

Now, further imagine that there will be wind turbines on every farms and solar PV on every rooftops in the future...and just calculate the sheer number of gigawatts of power that can be generated! It will cost too much, you'd say? Nope! Just invest in those steadily years after years at an affordable geometric growth rate...And I haven't even mention the use of desert solar electricity year round and transport it via HVDC lines (High Voltage DC). Solar energy collected from North Africa can even be thus wired to Northern Europe for use in the winter.
And I don't even need to mention about the reserved potential of nuclear energy to hydrogen.

H2 costs too much to transport? Nope! Just transport the electricity thru wires, while make the H2 and store it near the point of direct consumption.

I have no doubt that one day, our entire energy consumption will come mainly from wind and solar energy via the Hydrogen economy, BEV, and direct solar thermal collectors. Fossil fuel will be phased out, and waste cellulosic biomass will only be used for making of plastics and for organic chemical feedstock.

The sky will be ever so clear, you can see many times the number of stars at night...no more oil spills and petroleum pollution...none of the nuclear dangers and nuclear waste storage nightmare...no more oil wars and no more energy crisis...much lower rates of respiratory ailments, lung and other cancers, heart attack and stroke...Global warming will be gradually reversed!Gentlemen, that is my dream...may be yours, too!

No need to dream. My air is clean. AGW is too small to measure. Oil spills are a tiny fraction of natural oil entering the environment. I have no nightmares about spent nuclear fuel. While we will all still die, it is at a much later age.

I am not too worried that the dreams of fear mongers will come true. When you city dwellers want electricity and fuel for POV, it will be provided but not by making rural areas as ugly as cities with millions of solar panels and wind turbines.

Thanks for sharing that. The illusion is broken: the image unclear: the melody is fading, the sweet scent is gone. I was suffering from the lift of a driving dream, but now my feet are back in the mud where the endless struggle continues; the pain is returning; despair covers all like a veil of destruction in this garden of tears..

"You should take calculator and compute how many wind machine and solar panel you need to achieve your dream and see that is impossible."

Yes, I have, and it's doable. Putting wind turbines in America's Great Plain alone will supply the USA with several times the total energy requirement. Solar PV's on existing rooftop areas will more than supply the entire energy requirement of the USA.

Expensive? Rome is not built in one day. Spread out the cost over a decade or two, then, renewable energy will be the least expensive route! Afterall, the fuel is already free! You just have to harness the energy.

"Both physically and economically, generates electricity to transform it to H2 and then back to electricity is certainly not in the stream of the efficiency you dream of."

There is no other method of large-scale renewable energy storage that is more efficient than via the H2 route! Battery electricity, Compress air storage, hydrostatic energy storage can only supply hours to a day's worth of energy, not enough to depend on.

If H2 is used for heat-and-power co-generation and distributed generation, expect efficiency in the 80-90% range in the H2 consumption phase...almost as good as battery electricity, compressed air, or even hydrostatic electricity. In the electrolysis phase, GE is coming up with an electrolyzer having 80-85% efficiency. High-temp electrolysis can get to 140% efficiency! You actual gain energy electrical energy from the wasted heat energy from a gas turbine power plant generator! Wow!

Axil:  The problem with hydrogen is that it is nowhere near implementation.  Gen IV HTGRs do not yet exist.  Hydrogen distribution networks do not yet exist outside a few narrow industrial corridors.   The calls for hydrogen have been used as excuses to put off immediate action on petroleum use, and the immediate sources of hydrogen are the same fossil fuels which are rising steeply in price.

Right now, the least-cost, fastest-return path is the PHEV/BEV.  Hydrogen FCV's may wind up being superior, but a great deal must be bootstrapped; because of this, they will take at least 20 years to form a major part of the market.  The instabilities of our overloaded grid already call for a combination of distributed generation and demand-side management.  Nuclear hydrogen isn't going to help with this even when it arrives, while PHEV/BEV can start to serve immediately with dynamic charging and power-factor control.

Wintermane:  Back up your claims with more than empty words.

Quoth Roger Pham:

There is no other method of large-scale renewable energy storage that is more efficient than via the H2 route!

Battery electricity, Compress air storage, hydrostatic energy storage can only supply hours to a day's worth of energy, not enough to depend on.

Eng-Poet,

You put your bet on CAES (Compressed Air Energy Storage)? Using the data you supplied, as it costs 7% of the energy of H2 to compress it (to 5000 psi), meaning after substracting efficiency lost during the compression process, about 5% of mechanical energy is available in the compressed H2 at 5000 psi. According to gas law, compressed H2 and compressed air have nearly the same mechanical energy level at the same pressure and volume. So, using CAES (compressed air), you can store only 5% of energy in a given container at a given pressure as in comparison to when H2 is used as energy store. This means that you will need 20x the volume for CAES...think of the cost! A 160 liter Quantum carbon fiber H2 tank costs ~$2000. To store the same amount of energy using Compressed Air in the same container at the same pressure will require 20 containers for a cost of $40,000. Wow! A car may not even consume a third of that amount in fuel cost. And you must pay for the energy used to compress the air.

Axil,

Here's to the kountry bumkin II

He waddles down the dusty country road;
in slow paces but occasional fox trots,
he was stooping and sometimes halting,
wondering about the wonderful lightness of being,
a walking scarecrow, his pants holed and ragged;
well now, this ain't nuthin' to be bragged,
his eyes dulled and sleepy, as the pace was easy,
when all of a sudden, His sluggish brain awakens,
when he gawked at the imposing and sobering sight,
of the recently-placed GE wind turbine,
when he hears the easy whisper he started to wonder,
as to how beautiful it looks in the field of flowers,
as the sweet scented wind gently stirs it; the blades gently flashing; the bees softly bussing. He lowered his head in awed and had a hard time walking away! he he he! :)