14H·

Hydrogen is dead, long live hydrogen!

Dear gq community,

Over the last few days, the topic of hydrogen has repeatedly been the subject of interesting discussions.

Just yesterday there was an interesting discussion in which I expressed my opinion that hydrogen drives have lost out to battery drives in passenger cars and are therefore dead. I am still of this opinion.

Hydrogen is dead!

However, just a short time later I read a mega-interesting article on energy consumption and storage that fundamentally changed my mind about investing in hydrogen!

Hydrogen is alive!

You may think that the rabbit has eaten something wrong, but that is by no means the case and I would like to pick you up on this @Epi
@SAUgut777
@Multibagger
@Tenbagger2024 and of course anyone else I can't think of at the moment ;)

Due to the ever-increasing amounts of energy required for data centers and industry, the procurement of energy is becoming increasingly important. Above all, green energy from wind, water, thermal energy etc. is in demand here. But the energy generated cannot be stored adequately.

Battery storage systems have too little capacity and lose stored energy.

And this is where hydrogen comes in.

I would like to explain it simply in my own words, but I am attaching interesting links that go into more detail.

The unused energy from renewable energy sources is used to produce hydrogen and store it in former natural gas caverns. It is also possible to store the hydrogen in salt caverns.

If too little renewable energy is generated, the hydrogen is converted back into electricity. The efficiency is currently "only" 60%. However, it should be noted that this 60% would not exist without the storage option.

Another advantage of using salt and natural gas caverns is that no cost-intensive earthworks are necessary.

Several companies in Germany are already moving in this direction. Among others, I have read about projects by $LIN (-0,76%) Linde, $DE0005682504 EWE, $RWE (+1,42%) RWE or even $UN0 (-1,7%) Uniper are being driven forward.

Here are a few more links that I found interesting. There is a lot more information on this, some of it very technical, but Google is our friend.

This text was written by a rabbit without the help of an AI - so please forgive spelling mistakes or incompleteness ;)

Salt caverns:

https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/forschung/einrichtungen/institute/amu/wasserstoff-forschung-h2-unia/h2lab/h2-sp/physikalische-speicherung/untertage/

Natural gas caverns:

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/oldenburg_ostfriesland/Wasserstoff-statt-Erdgasspeicher-Arbeiten-in-Huntorf-starten,wasserstoff594.html

Somewhat older material:

https://www.deutsche-rohstoffagentur.de/DE/Themen/Nutzung_tieferer_Untergrund_CO2Speicherung/Downloads/2021_Speicherung_Wasserstoff.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2

https://www.energieforschung.de/de/aktuelles/projekteinblicke/2021/risa

11 Commenti

Tenbagger2024@Tenbagger2024

14H

I am invested in Linde. Here I have hardly any risk that such scenarios could also flop. I also have a fantasy in fortescue hydrogen

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Gi Vey@Nofan

13H

I don't see a future for hydrogen. Nuclear power is more likely.......

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TradingHase@TradingHase

13H

Thank you for your assessment. I also see a future for nuclear power with the new technologies that are coming up. Would you like to explain your assessment of why hydrogen has no future as a storage medium?

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Gi Vey@Nofan

11H

@TradingHase With pleasure. Using hydrogen to store energy is the worst idea of all. Efficiency is one thing. But what is even worse is the cost-intensive handling. It is simply far too complex and expensive to handle hydrogen. The infrastructure alone.

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TradingHase@TradingHase

10H

You do realize that we are talking about storage in existing caverns, right?

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Gi Vey@Nofan

10H

@TradingHase That doesn't matter. The point is: What do you have to do to store hydrogen? Compressed and or liquid. Everything requires a lot of energy for too little energy density. You can't just dump hydrogen anywhere like gasoline or natural gas. You have to go to great lengths.
If you want to know more about it, the explanations will take too long.
Just ask an AI or google how to store hydrogen and how much it costs. In short, with today's technology, hydrogen is simply far too expensive. It's not worth it, it's better to use something else. Batteries, compressed air storage, water storage....etc..

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Nom@user28461

13H

In any case, hydrogen stocks are dead ( $PLUG $NEL $ITM $PCELL $BLDP...), the big players are now simply doing it all themselves $LIN $APD $AI

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Gomerdoc@Gomerdoc

I would hold the same view as @Tenbagger2024:
Hydrogen as a storage technology, but above all as a fuel for energy-intensive industries, will certainly retain or even gain its justification. But one thing is clear: all these small and large hydrogen companies, start-ups and hopefuls may or may not get anywhere, because in the end the two largest in the world $LIN and $AI will definitely be among the profiteers. In case of doubt, they will simply swallow up any competition that comes along.
There is no other company in the world that is even remotely as advanced in the field of hydrogen and already has such market dominance as these two.

And as far as battery storage is concerned, I think you're underestimating it a little. It is much easier, and now much cheaper, to store electricity in modern batteries for the long term than hydrogen in tanks.
H2 is simply the smallest element in the periodic table. It is extremely volatile and, in principle, can hardly be stored in its pure form in the long term or only with extreme energy expenditure such as liquefaction and the thermal disadvantages of doing so.
The energetic disadvantage of storing green electricity in hydrogen is simply basic physics and cannot be remedied by any technical measure: it will always remain so.

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Tenbagger2024@Tenbagger2024

@Gomerdoc
Perhaps also interesting

https://www.boerse-express.com/news/articles/fortescue-aktie-gruene-energie-als-rettungsanker-803018

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TradingHase@TradingHase

@Gomerdoc Batteries always lose a certain amount of charge over time, you notice this with electric cars after just 2 weeks of vacation and I don't notice it any differently with large storage systems.

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SGP@Koenigmidas

My hydrogen bets continue to run as a small admixture

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