Wind-generated Electricity to Power Hydrogen Refueling Station

[BR_Parkway]

Mississauga, Ontario One of the first United States-based hydrogen fueling stations to use electricity from wind power to produce hydrogen from water is under way in North Dakota.

Hydrogenics was awarded a contract by Basin Electric Power Cooperative to supply an electrolyzer-based hydrogen-refueling station for installation in Minot, North Dakota. In addition to the core electrolyzer module, Hydrogenics is supplying compression, storage and dispenser equipment.

The hydrogen produced will refuel hydrogen- powered vehicles, demonstrating the link between wind power and vehicle refueling. Recognizing the challenge presented by the intermittency and varying outputs of wind power, an important element of the project is the development of various control schemes by which the electrolyzer can interface with the electrical output of wind turbines to optimize fuel production, particularly during low electricity demand periods.

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=42293

[Botany]

1. neat

clean energy that is renewable and home grown

[phantom power]

2. Who is burning this H2? The article didn't say.

[Oerdin]

3. Ontario?

How is a station built in Ontario, Canada a "United States-based hydrogen fueling station"? When did we annex Canada?

[phantom power]

4. the installation is in ND.

[Kolesar]

6. &the dateline is Missisaugua, Ont

[jpak]

5. Humboldt University has a PV/hydrogen system

that operated for several years without human intervention....

http://www.humboldt.edu/~serc/trinidad.html

Saudi Arabia (of all places) has a 350 kW PV hydrogen system...

www.ieahia.org/pdfs/chapter11.pdf

Germany has a 370 kW PV array that produce hydrogen for fuel cells....

www.hydrogenhighway.ca.gov/ plan/reports/rolloutreport.pdf

Denmark is planning to produce hydrogen from wind power...

www.risoe.dk/rispubl/nei/33030-0034.pdf

Norway is using wind power (two 600 kW turbines) to produce hydrogen to provide electricity to an island community (a $5.4 MILLION project)...

www.ird.dk/Image/Utsira/Utsira.pdf

and ChimpCo is spending $1.2 BILLION to build two hydrogen producing nuclear reactors (200 kW and 500 kW) - lol!

nuclear.inl.gov/docs/ papers-presentations/lake_july_17w.pdf

[phantom power]

7. From the Denmark report (link below)...

They price out electrolyzer-based energy storage at 8 million DKK per Megawatt (page 26). At current exchange rates, this is $1.3 million (USD). If I wanted a gigawatt-class timeshifting capacity, that would be 1.3 billion per gigawatt, or 1.3 trillion per terawatt, etc. That's power capacity, not total energy storage capacity.

I didn't see any reference to what energy capacity they are planning, i.e. how many kilowatt-hours these plants can store, although they scoped them as having 150 cubic meters of H2 storage, at 30 atmospheres. They kept expressing storage in terms of Nm^3, which is a unit I don't recognize. Maybe somebody out there knows how to convert their specs into kilowatt hours.

Here's the report:
http://www.risoe.dk/rispubl/nei/33030-0034.pdf

[jpak]

8. 1.3 million per MW seems reasonable for distributed power systems

Denmark has over 560 small (~3 MW average) municipal combined heat and power facilities.

Adding a 3 MW electrolyzer/storage unit to each of these would cost ~4 million per plant or ~$0.8 billion for all existing Danish CHP plants.

This would hardly break the bank...

If all Danish wind power (2008-2010) were used to produce hydrogen, its energy value would be 14 PJ - but as the report points out it could not compete with natural gas for CHP fuel at current prices (hydrogen is ~2-3 times the current price of natural gas in DK).

But when the gas runs out....

[phantom power]

9. I guess it depends on what the goal is.

I try to imagine these systems in the context of a world without oil, coal or natural gas, since that's the world we're heading for. For the sake of argument suppose that nuclear is also not used. Then, that is a world where essentially all energy is produced by intermittent power sources. Probably wind, since it's the most economical.

In that world, I don't see how to get around the need for grid storage in the terawatt-hour range, and in the terawatt power range. Which implies investments of trillions of dollars. I still consider that an obtainable goal, but it sure is expensive. The kind of project that would occupy major fractions of an industrial nation's economy.

At any rate, what the Denmark report is describing is quite large by current standards, but it is at least an order of magnitude short of a system that could operate on pure wind, in a world with no fossil fuels at all. But that isn't their goal, either. At least, not yet.

[jpak]

10. I don't think anyone is going to run on pure wind

or pure PV, or pure biomass, etc.

Right now wind power capacity in DK is approaching the point where it will present a management problem for DK's national grid (now at ~15% of total capacity - hooray!!!).

In the near term, hydrogen production and H2 electric power systems (fuel cells, miniturbines whatever) will be used for load management. In the long term, it's the only way to go (IMHO anyway).

How fast this will happen depends on the price of natural gas in the EU and how fast the cost of mass-produced modular electrolyzer/storage systems declines.

I thinks its cool as shit...

:)

[phantom power]

11. There's an old saying...

it's easier to turn a moving bicycle. One thing I'll say for them. They've got their bicycle moving. Here in the US, our bicycle is sitting the garage with flat tires and a rusted chain.

[jpak]

12. Yup!

:)

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. The 'N' may stand for 'normal'

Here's a scientist who had to ask far and wide to get an answer to what seems a similar question:

I then contacted an editor at Pollution Engineering Magazine (E-mail:
[e-mail]) who refered me to a Ph.D. in Germany named Dr.
Thomas Schmidt (E-mail: [e-mail]), who explained that
the N term is an abbreviation of norm or normal. He continued to explain
that "Normal, in this connection, means a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius
and a pressure of 1.013 bar, the conditions at which one mole of an ideal
gas has a volume of 22.413837 liters." This definition makes sense to me
in conjunction with a flue gas measurement. Ken Johnson, an administrator
with the MadSci Network (E-mail: [e-mail]) confirmed this
explantion with an environmental scientist in Australia.

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may99/926998893.Eg.r.html

So it could be cubic metres, measured at 'normal' temperature and pressure.

[phantom power]

14. That sounds like the right answer. Good catch!