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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric who wrote (5347)	2/26/2009 2:59:30 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Then there is the problem of energy density. Funny how people are quick to point out the problem of the energy density of hydrogen, but fail to see a similar problem with depending upon solar and wind for our baseload power generation needs. What I want to see, whether it be hydrogen or NG powered vehicles, is the ability of people to have the OPTION of refueling their vehicles at home without having to travel to a service station. This would create additional competitive pressures that would help in keeping fuel prices subdued. THIS would be an ideal utilization of solar and wind, generating power that is used to produce and store hydrogen, without having to rely upon those generating sources for primary power, IMO. But to create a national infrastructure for hydrogen production/distribution, we're going to need major upgrades in our baseload power structure. And that, IMO, will require more nukes, geo-thermal, and ocean wave power generation that is available on a near constant basis. As for energy density, I recognize that hydrogen used outside of a fuel cell will not be able to compete with fossil fuels. This is why better storage technology will be necessary where it can be compressed to greater densities SAFELY. QTWW's hydrogen storage tanks can be pressurized to 10K psi, which nets more than 80% additional storage capacity than 5K psi tanks (if I remember their claims properly). The promise of hydrogen is the ability to have a domestic source of vehicle fuel, even if it is derived by using electricity to "crack" it from water (thus, becoming more an energy storage medium). However, I'm not wedded to the idea. If they can create ultracapacitor technology, or anything else, that yields more efficient results, I'm totally cool with that. Hawk