Fuel Cells

[Dieselboy]

Saw a youtube documentary recently about Fuel Cells: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCs9OOHP-0o

According to that, in Europe they're apparently installing these in homes and there's a government incentive for doing so. 

These work by chemically generating electricity from gas. Out of this you get 2 main things - 1. heat and 2. electricity. You also get some water vapour (if the gas is Hydrogen) and if the gas is LPG then you get some other stuff I don't know about.
The heat energy is not wasted and it is used to heat up water. Because the electricity production is not on/off like a power outlet, the excess electricity is stored in a battery and excess from that is put back into the grid which you charge for.

The fuel cells operate at over 90% efficiency and so it's cheaper than buying electricity from the grid at around half the cost to the grid.

I was intrigued about using LPG as the fuel source (because Hydrogen is not made naturally on planet Earth ). I couldn't find any direct information on using LPG (which is what the fuel cell in the video uses as it's in a home). I did manage to find a whitepaper about using LPG for this purpose but it basically described a 2-stage process. First processing LPG to make hydrogen. Then using the hydrogen through the chemical reaction to make electricity, heat and water.

All in all, I found this fascinating and think it's great. I'm looking forward to seeing fuel cells in homes eventually.

So this got me thinking... if I can produce my own electricity from gas at half the cost of the grid, whilst sending excess electricity back into the grid and charging them for it (like what solar panels do). Then can I run my fuel cell 24x7x365 and basically make money from the grid?

[deanwebb]

The answer is basically yes, and there are two responses to that:

Environmentalists:


And Donald Trump's coal cronies:


Worse for the coal lads is that LNG (what we call it here in the states) plants themselves dovetail nicely with the free-but-variable sources such as solar and wind. LNG plants are easy to start up and shut down for changes in the grid due to variable sources coming online and offline. Baseline power plants like coal and nuclear cannot start up or shut down easily, making them poor fits with variable sources.

But the biggest threat to coal is not from variable sources, it's from LNG, and that's the part that coal proponents leave out, since LNG is still a fossil fuel and part of the bigger family of what has historically been "Big Energy".

[Dieselboy]

So that brings me on to my next thing. Nuclear was known to be a bit on the dangerous side and around the same time, someone had researched a much safer way using something called molten salt nuclear fuel. It was shelved for some reason. But guess what? China is building 5 of these molten salt nuclear reactors. Because the fuel is liquid apparently it can be safely shut off. I saw a video on that recently, too. I cant find it now but keywords like "molten, salt, thorium" is a good start.

https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21600656-thorium-element-named-after-norse-god-thunder-may-soon-contribute

[deanwebb]

Yes, those look to be much safer not only for their ease of shutdown, but also because their smaller size means far less catastrophe when things go horribly wrong.

[SimonV]

So this got me thinking... if I can produce my own electricity from gas at half the cost of the grid, whilst sending excess electricity back into the grid and charging them for it (like what solar panels do). Then can I run my fuel cell 24x7x365 and basically make money from the grid?

Then they'll just start taxing you. It's what they did in Belgium during the solar panel boom. 

[Dieselboy]

Yea I'm thinking if I were to do this,  best to keep it quiet 

[dlots]

At least here in the US the power companies are lobbying heavily (and winning from what I have heard) to stop people from being able to sell back to the grid.  I wouldn't count on being able to do it long term if I were you.  Also in the US there are quite a few places that have made it pretty much illegal to have solar panels.

[icecream-guy]

At least here in the US the power companies are lobbying heavily (and winning from what I have heard) to stop people from being able to sell back to the grid.  I wouldn't count on being able to do it long term if I were you.  Also in the US there are quite a few places that have made it pretty much illegal to have solar panels.

And they are right in banning....solar panels DO NOT generate power from a renewable resource.

There's a lot of solar panel scams going on out there. probably why they are being banned.

[Dieselboy]

 

Not renewable, true. But an infinite number of solar panels wouldn't consume all of the solar energy and remove it from plants and heating up the earth etc. Solar panels are utilising the excess solar energy that would ordinarily hit the earth and dissipate.

To make proper use of solar panels, the generated electricity should be stored locally instead of being put back into the grid IMO. And I don't see anyone selling that as a product. There's one crazy electricity guy on youtube that made a video showing his custom battery set up but as he's in the UK he doesn't use solar panels to charge the batteries. Instead, he uses a timer and the lower cost electricity at night to charge up some truck batteries and then flips over to those during the day.

[dlots]

The big issue with solar is you don't store electricity: power is generated as it is used, it's not like they store it up in batteries or anything like that.  So the time when everyone is using lots of power is generally at night the solar panels do nothing.  It just means they don't have to burn as much coal, gas, etc during the day.

Nuclear power is actually pretty safe assuming you don't build on a fault line (See anywhere in Japan) and take proper safty precautions.  The big issue with Nuclear right now is the government won't let them upgrade their systems.  They don't want to use 60 year old tech, they just don't have a choice.

There is talk about using the solar power to heat salt, the salt stays hot for a really long time, and that is then used as a battery, I think that sounds quite nifty.

[icecream-guy]

There is talk about using the solar power to heat salt, the salt stays hot for a really long time, and that is then used as a battery, I think that sounds quite nifty.

OT never knew that, I've been using sand and volcanic rocks in my smokers as heat sinks, I'll have to try that.

[dlots]

Yep

Salt can get REALLY hot apparently

https://youtu.be/PDRWQUUUCF0?t=116

[dlots]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating-solar-tower-is-worth-its-salt-with-24-7-power/

[Dieselboy]

Interesting