Energy infrastructure

I suggest you look up power prices here compared to France....

On the face of it, this seems to be more directed at nuclear energy "enthusiasts" than anyone else. But it ropes in cranks about climate change etc as though this is either accurate or relevant to this conversation. There are several generalisations which are lacking in substance. There's plenty of flaws when advocating for nuclear power in Ireland and I'd say none of those are visible here.

Nuclear IMO shouldn't form part of the picture if we are looking for 80+% renewable generation, without some clear and present evidence for the economic, technical and political advantages it would offer over wind and storage capabilities. We are uniquely disadvantaged in this respect between logistics and domestic capabilities. hydrogen offers the flexibility in logistics, generation and cost-effectiveness that scales well for Ireland and I hope this is the direction we move in.

Would you care to share what the costs of hydrogen storage, generation and transport are and how those make it cost effective? It just rolls of your tongue as if these are well known when it's actually a black hole that no one has a clue about because no country on the planet has attempted or done it. Both the UK and France have retreated from the idea of hydrogen as a large scale energy storage medium due likely to the chemical engineers finally being asked what they think instead of basing policy on the ignorant prognostications of dreamers.

I used to be very positive about hydrogen and I was a big fan of the idea. It all seemed so nice - clean - you burn it and all you get is water; instead the reality is you get so much NOX you might as well be burning diesel. And no Petunia, water injection won't solve anything because that lowers the temperature, robs you of efficency and makes the whole thing even less economic and efficient.

The reason my views changed on hydrogen is that I noticed that the biggest critics and doubters of the hydrogen economy were chemical engineers. First it was one in the US who was a professor in the topic and there have been several since.

Has anyone here, besides me, actually made hydrogen and filled a balloon with it to then watch it soar into the air? In my teens, I got some expired carbon batteries, which used to be very common, and disassembled them to get their casings, which under the cardboard or steel ones were made of zinc. I then got some hydrocloric acid and put it in a laboratory flask with a narrow neck and then stretched the mouth of a balloon over the top of the flask neck.

Simple, right. No, this is where i learned hydrogen is never simple. First the balloon popped off the neck as the pressure built, then I singed myself on the flask because it got really hot. So starting from scratch with a water bath for the flask, more zinc, more HCL another balloon and some elastic bands to tie the neck of the ballon on, and hey presto ... well it took longer than I hoped and I had to pinch the balloon shut, get it offf the neck to add more zinc and HCL and then get the ballon back on without loosing too much of the hydrogen... But in the end I bloody did it and the ballon had just enough hydrogen to counter it's weight and add a touch of buoyancy and I tied it's neck and then let it go to marvel at my achievement.

A metre, one sodding meter it rose and then POP, because along with the bubbles of hydrogen, the roiling mixture produced tiny droplets of HCL as the hydrogen bubbles burst and this HCL vapour wafted up into the ballon along with the hydrogen and attacked the rubber of the ballon.

Why this long boring verbiage? Because it gave me the insight to believe what the chemical engineers are on about - simple in theory but the details and complications are many, are unforseen and are not simple or cheap to overcome.

The ESB hydrogen based economy plan has so many problems attached it's hard to know where to begin. The world doesn't have enough electrolyser production capcity, there isn't enough production of platinum group metals to make the electrolysers, and electrolysers need ultra pure water which can only be made at great expense with more costly equipment and energy.

The simple idea of vast solar arrays in deserts producing enormous quantites of cheap electricity which is then used to produce hydrogen is a shiny beautiful idea that in reality is a turd. Deserts don't usually have abundant quantities of water and if they have any in aquifers, like Australias incredibly precious and not to be wasted, Great Artesian Basin, then it's not pure enough.

Even the water in clean flowing Irish rivers and lakes is far too dirty to be used neat. And as if that weren't problem enough, electrolysers can't be operated intermittently. That's right, this profoundly simple idea of make lots of hydrogen when there's lots of wind and excess power, is a nonsense, because you can't stop-start electrolysers without them soon deteriorating, and because of the platinum group metals, they aren't cheap enough you can afford to break them.

And this is the hydrogen economy - a whole bunch of simplistic ideas that are in reality just a near unending series of big problems that are innefficient and costly to overcome.

I think MIT costed batteries and extrapolated their future costs. The answer was they will never be cheap enough.

I suggest you get a flight to Orkney- it seems they are already doing what you say is impossible.

Grid capacity constraints in Orkney mean that renewable energy created here is often lost or wasted. Now, new projects involving the production of hydrogen could be the answer to the capacity issue.

No need, i'll just use the internet, thanks.

The EMEC centre has the capacity store 500 Kg of hydrogen: https://www.emec.org.uk/facilities/

That translates to 13.8 Mwh. Orkney has a population of 22,400, so if that facility was actually configured as the backup for when the wind stops blowing, which it isn't, everyone gets 616 Wh to play with.

You haven't quite managed to convince me that Orkney is an example of a wholly renewables and hydrogen based economy.

ok great so now it is not about the technology, now just about the scale.

It took 50+ years to put in place the oil economy infrastructure but now because it is not here right now, forget it. We are only 5 years in - there is a long way to go.

Theres some use in the bio-digesters -

But its limited , it's main efficiency is if a large portion of its feedstock is waste product .. but thats messy , difficult to collect prepare/unpack and pretty limited availability,

Mixing food waste, with animal wastes/slurry and chucking in maize and grass silage does work , but its not free energy and its a drop in the ocean ..

Chap here explains he has 1 more year to put in a new offshore well and extend the lifetime of the Corrib Nat Gas infrastructure which is ramping down.

If this was done - we wouldn't need LNG or major Nat Gas storage over the next couple of decades and it could support the 6 "emergency" thermal power plants the country needs for the next 5 to 10 years. (Assuming they can get offshore wind E / S and W by 2033 which is a big ask ;-))

I dont have a problem with ireland producing gas , we're using it after all , and will be for a long period of time ,

I think we could do with gas storage , 1 for security , and 2 economics , any gas produced excess to requirement in summer can be stored for peak use ..

Theres also a limit to irish gas production at the moment, the Irish market .. we have no export facilities..