perhaps i am confused.
solar is an energy source, H is not?? coal is a energy source, H is not?? makes no sense.
they are all just carriers of energy. coal does nothing by itself, solar does nothing by itself, nothing does anything by itself ? some process has to convert that energy into usable energy. or, one must build a process that does work of whatever the input is (electric from batts, H, goop, whatever).
how efficient solar vs H doesn't really matter, you need to find something that we can consume, and water is a source and it has H for us to extract (aka harvest), ...
whats so hard about the word "harvest", its the same as "organ harvesting", as in "to go in and extract". to harvest H means to go into the water and get H out.
...and there's lots of it. how you get it is the same problem like how to get electric from solar, or how to get gas from fracking, or how do you make a motor drive a wheel using electric w/o any cords. you still need a intermediate process to be able to use any energy. for electric cars its a battery, for say home heating and cars H can be used.
so now its Musk vs Toyota and others. if H is so dead then why does Toyota make a Mirai that can be recharged in 5min and go ~315mi on one tank? that's very comparable to Tesla Model3. the Mirai will go longer distance, but if you needed to say drive 400mi the Mirai will be there much much sooner than the Model3 ! Mirai and Model3 both carry relatively dangerous materials, Lithium vs H, but Lithium eventually becomes an environmental nightmare, H does not. Mirai base vs Model3 base is way more $$, but H types are just coming into maturity.
none of the Tesla/Musk hype seems to show A-Z for each process. follow every step, including mining lithium and making batts. the starting line is sun rays and water, the finish line is two cars crossing that 300mi stripe. all of the in-between needs energy just to make the vehicle go.
where is "get lithium" and "make battery" in this chart ?
just because you may have access to a form of energy that is plentiful that doesn't mean its very useful if you have to wait 8hrs after every 10min of use (exaggeration to make a point).
so let me ask, Toyota and others are building H cars because why? for the fun of it? if batt based vehicles are the future then i simply don't understand why anyone would be building H cars.
and yes, i see a ton of article bashing H, here's one
“Producing the hydrogen to power FCVs can generate GHGs, depending on the production method, but much less than that emitted by conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles.”
yet nothing about the pollution a lithium harvesting and batt making process does ?
is lithium a viable source of material to carry charge??
here, do the math.
Telsa 85 kWh battery pack weighs 1,200 lb
3.6V nominal 2 Ah 18650 cell = 7.2 Wh =~ 0.6 gram of Lithium
~46g per 18650 package
According to USGS, Bolivia's Uyuni Desert has 5.4 million tonnes of lithium. In the United States, lithium is recovered from brine pools in Nevada. However, half the world's known reserves are located in Bolivia along the central eastern slope of the Andes.
The US publisher Ward's, estimates that as of 2010 there were
1.015 billion motor vehicles in use in the world.
is that enough lithium?.
1.015billion x ~16.744lbs = ?
you'll need way more than 16lbs(lithium):1200lb batt to power UPS and FredX trucks
take trip issue with lithium.
4k mi trip, H and Tesla can go 400mi per tank. H takes 5min to fill, lithium take 8hrs. same speed.
4k/400 = 10 tanks
10*8hrs = 3.333 days !
10*5min =
less than 1hr
so to make the trip you must have ~3.5 days of downtime to use your lithium. to me, this is not so efficient, now is it.
so if UPS uses lithium and FredX uses H, UPS goes chap 11.so how wonderful solar can make electric, and even if it powers the grid, looks like other problems will make all electric things not very useful. nice to have 1x10^63636363 kVA waiting to be used, but if you can't use it, what's the point?
where you get energy and how efficient that harvest is, is only half the problem.