this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Hydrogen vehicles in Denmark left without fuel as all commercial refuelling stations shuttered (www.hydrogeninsight.com)
submitted 1 year ago by veganpizza69@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[–] drkt@feddit.dk 37 points 1 year ago (4 children)

lol

lmao, even

Just build a fucking train, it's stupid that Denmark doesn't just have rail everywhere. DSB is a joke. Banedanmark is underfunded. Light rail doesn't go anywhere useful unless you live in Copenhagen. Intercity is way too expensive to matter unless you get discount tickets a month in advance. IC trains are so frequently not-running that it's become a major point in my buddys argument for working from home.

[–] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Come to BC. We have trains from Vancouver going to Seattle and Portland(via US run Amtrak(70-100$ US), a transit train from Mission to Vancouver and back, once a day each way(5-15$ depending on distance) and a 3000$ a ticket train going to Jasper, Alberta from Vancouver BC and back.

Yaaay Conservatives. Thanks for ruining passenger rail.

[–] sadreality@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hmmm... surprising, US has similar issues for unsurprising reasons.

[–] drkt@feddit.dk 2 points 1 year ago

It's probably the exact same reasons, actually.

[–] WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.fmhy.net 2 points 1 year ago

DSB is a joke, Banedanmark is a myth we are all controlled by something greater, TRAINS DNA of public infastructure

[–] skymtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But in Merica Cars are democracy, Denmark shoils build an 80 lane highway

[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

USA! USA! USA!

[–] Duplodicus@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The continental US is roughly 2/3 the size of Europe. Comparing Denmark to it is nonsensical given the differences in size.

[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

IDK if size really matters here. Connecting Chicago to Milwaukee (100mi) with HSR probably makes sense

there are many others too:

Chicago-Indianapolis (200mi)

Chicago-St Louis (300mi)

Chicago-Pittsburgh (500mi)

so many good connections

[–] Duplodicus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We have freight rail connecting that already. Size should matter here because the population densities are not the same.

[–] Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think size should matter more.

In USA/Canada we end up with population pimples with little in between. This is perfect for HSR, since there are very few required stations between primary cities.

Ottawa-Montréal, for example, is ~200km apart with no major centers in between, so an HSR can cross that distance with no stops

Toronto-Montréal is ~550km apart, with one possible stop in Kingston if the train splits for Ottawa. Again an HSR could make great time here. With the TGV's 270kph station-station time, it would be 2 hours, slightly faster than flying + security (2h10-2h30) and less than half the driving time.

I'm knot as knowledgable about US geography, but I'm positive there and many city pairs like this on the east and west coasts.

[–] jasory@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is perfect for travel but not passenger load which is what makes a transport system economical. Rail costs several million dollars per kilometre, so a Toronto to Montreal would cost at least 500 million, closer to a few billion. And if it travels through low density land you won't be getting many additional passengers except those that actually live in Toronto and Montreal. This is why HSR is in densely populated areas like France or Japan, or China. There is an actual large passenger load that makes the investment worthwhile. An even easier-to-see example is that city driving is much slower than on highways, if point-to-point travel time was really the function of public transit then intercity travel would be prioritised not the much larger and more economical street stops that every public transit system uses.

[–] Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

so a Toronto to Montreal would cost at least 500 million, closer to a few billion

$3 billion on 1.7km of Gardener Expressway repair. $3.6 billion for Turcot interchange replacement. No one bats an eye at those costs.

passenger load which is what makes a transport system economical

Toronto-Montréal is the busiest domestic flight route, followed by Toronto-Ottawa. Add Chicago and New York to capture the two busiest routes between the two countries (both in the top 20 international flights). Plus however many bus, train, and drive.

Edit: just plugged 15 Nov into Google flights; there are 46 flights from Toronto to Montreal that day (Pearson and Island combined).

[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

passengers can't ride freight rail tho

[–] Duplodicus@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

That all depends on how cool the train crew are

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Hydrogen never really made sense for cars, the infrastructure and storage is too expensive. But I wonder if it'd work for trains that haven't been fully electrified with overhead cables yet. You'd need much less infrastructure at just a few locations.

[–] Kuinox@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On the other hand, my city is trying hydrogen bus.
There is a single refilling station needed.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh that's a good idea too. If the hydrogen and electricity is green, it'd have less of an environmental than batteries.

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It isn't. The amount of green hydrogen is a fraction of a fraction a percent of all hydrogen. The rest is all made from natural gas and the CO2 is released into the air. It's a green washed fossil fuel.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But if they're making the stations, they can use or manufacture green hydrogen. It just a matter of the political will.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But if they’re making the stations

But they’re not. See: this article. They’re not profitable, and if they ever were, it was propped up by greenwashing a byproduct of natural gas production.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The article didn't link. Also, not profitable compared to what? Because running at a slight loss to decrease ghg emissions would still be worth it. Are there fully electric battery alternatives to use instead?

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m referring to the article posted in this post. Stations are being shut down because they aren’t profitable. It doesn’t have to be compared to anything. If they can’t make hydrogen cheap enough, they can’t sell enough and they can’t sustain the business mode.

The cheapest way to make hydrogen now is as a byproduct of natural gas production which is not as eco-friendly as anybody would hope.

Hydrogen for consumer use is a boondoggle and waste of time. BEVs are here and work great on existing infrastructure (for L2 charging at least). I drive an EV and exclusively charge it at home. No special station required.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. That's what I said originally. Consumer use never made sense. But busses or trains might still make sense since they'd have much more centralized infrastructure.

[–] jasory@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

"Green hydrogen", is also incredibly inefficient in its own right. Approximately a 70 percent loss of energy compared to 15-20 percent for battery storage. It would literally be just as efficient to burn natural gas in a power station (with a 50+ percent efficiency, modern power turbines are very efficient) and use that power to charge a battery. The entire "hydrogen economy" has been a pipe dream by either complete morons or fraudsters (probably both). (Hydrogen aeroplanes might actually work, but that is by combustion and jet engines are already very efficient).

[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Today, green hydrogen is essentially an expensive, low-efficiency battery.

That could change with future work on making more efficient hydrolysis, but today, the numbers really don't work out on green hydrogen vs alternatives like lithium ion or overhead wires for busses.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But a hydrogen battery has much much better specific energy than lithium ion. So you can have a much longer range.

[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hydrogen is very light, so the energy per kilogram is quite high.

However, hydrogen is also naturally not very dense. Hydrogen at 1 atmosphere has a tiny fraction of the energy of a similar volume of batteries. Pressurized hydrogen is similarly dense to a battery, and liquid hydrogen is about twice as dense.

So to make hydrogen dense, you need a very thick, heavy tank to hold the pressurized hydrogen. That significantly cuts into your weight advantages.

Add to that, fuel cells are very inefficient at converting hydrogen to usable electricity.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe I'm missing other conversion factors, but hydrogen has a volumetric energy density of 9MJ/L which is about 2.5kWh/L compared to about 1.7kWh/L for the newest Tesla batteries. So hydrogen is more energy dense than batteries even by volume.

[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aren't those the numbers for liquid hydrogen?

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Oh maybe. That would make extra complications. Looks like low pressure gas is 0.5 kWh/L which is more in line with what you were saying.

[–] notabotactually@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

Irish Rail is trying this. There was an article posted about it yesterday!

[–] pedz@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nope. They tried hydrogen trains in Germany and are not buying more of them.

https://www.popsci.com/technology/hydrogen-train-germany/

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do battery operated work? Are they short rage trains? Or do they have like a car full of batteries? And how do recharge times work? Can they recharge just in the stations? If it works for them, great. And it sounds like it is. It just seemed like there were several problems.

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Battery locomotives don't have enough range to be useful solo, but they're a handy to add on to an existing train to give it regenerative braking and improve it's efficiency.

You want practically zero emissions train, you build overhead catenary wires. But that's decades old tech that just works, it's not sexy futuristic stuff.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Hear me out… SOLAR FREAKIN RAILWAYS

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was saying it seems to make sense to use hydrogen as an intermediate step before you can put in all the infrastructure for overhead wires. If Germany is just using electric engines plus diesel engines now, instead of hydrogen engines, then there's still emitting a whole lot more than they would otherwise. Even if it is cheaper.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's no way Hydrogen in Germany would be more green than diesel. It'd just be greenwashing. You'd need to make electricity to make hydrogen, store it and transport it, then turn it back into electricity (that's how a hydrogen engine works, not by burning it). In the mean time, Germany is increasing it's production of dirty energy, so the hydrogen production would have to be done with dirty energy. There's no way that process is more efficient than just using diesel directly.

It might be better somewhere else, but not in Germany.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You don't need to use the standard grid energy. You can use off peak power rates in areas with a lot of wind, so it'd use the otherwise unusable energy. Or you could disconnect from the grid entirely. But the power source is absolutely a concern.

What would the co2 trade off look like between diesel and hydrogen? Diesel you'd have a constant co2 per mile, whereas hydrogen would have higher kwh efficiency, but high conversion inefficiency, then some percentage of the energy emits co2 at a certain rate. I don't have time to crunch the numbers now, but I would be surprised if hydrogen was more ghg intensive.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or you could disconnect from the grid entirely.

The off peak usage, sure. This though? How would that be green? You could spend the same money to install solar, wind, whatever and take dirty energy off the grid. That's the point is you need to use energy to make it, when instead that energy could remove dirty energy. It's greenwashing. It's not removing demand for dirty energy, its just increasing overall energy demand.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Increasing energy use compared to diesel? If you count the energy in the diesel, I'm pretty sure hydrogen would use less. But I think what matters over all is the total co2 emitted per mile, including generation.

[–] BarelyOriginal@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago

I don't know, have you seen those wires above the rails? They always look sexy and futuristic to me, especially the high speed rail ones 🥵

[–] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Other than ideas like synfuels, it is the only thing that makes sense for cars. People are just falling prey to BEV propaganda. You don't want unsustainable mining and a >400kg battery pack in every car. It is the big act of greenwashing today, and green transportation won't happen until BEVs are abandoned or scaled way back.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unsustainable from a co2 standpoint, ecological damage, or human rights and damage standpoint? I think we're probably thinking about different sorts of sustainability.

[–] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you mean the cost of battery mining/production, it's all three. We currently can't even make batteries without vast amounts of fossil fuels. And due to many factors like long-duration energy storage problems, BEVs can't reach net zero without hydrogen anyways.

[–] MartinXYZ@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm from Denmark and I've never even heard there were Hydrogen cars around here.

Edit: but then again, I don't drive a car, so maybe Im just not the target audience.

[–] CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Big L for them.