They have the means (a lot of sun) to produce green H2, let’s see how it works for them.
Producing H2 isn’t hard. Storing and transporting it is the tricky part.
California spent billions of dollars trying this and never got it off the ground.
Incidentally, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Spanish, and the Russians all got around this with full electrification of their rail networks. Then you don’t need to produce H2, just push electricity where you need it on your grid.
You don’t even have to fully electricity your network. Having battery electric trains run on a partially electrified network has proven to work fairly well. Charge when you’re running on an electrified section, and if you’re running on a line that mostly isn’t electrified, you can electrify individual stations to top up the batteries there.
Don’t get me wrong, I want hydrogen power to work, but I have yet to see anything that has reasonable promise to be better than a combination of electrification and battery electric trains.
Having battery electric trains run on a partially electrified network has proven to work fairly well.
You still run into the old rocket problem - needing more fuel to move more fuel - but it’s definitely less of a problem than with fully unelectrified rail.
I want hydrogen power to work, but I have yet to see anything that has reasonable promise
I’ve seen much more success with synthetic gasoline and kerosene, from a safety and reliability perspective.
But it’s more expensive than simple battery electricity per W, so… We get cheap and dangerous, instead.
Except you have that problem with everything that doesn’t somehow take power from a catenary or similar - in the case of diesel, you’re also moving your fuel, so I’m not sure how that would be different.
And I wouldn’t exactly say batteries are cheap or dangerous. Yes, when you do have problems, the fires are quite big, but it’s a rarity for problems to exist, especially with trains that are maintained to a much higher standard than your average car.
Except you have that problem with everything that doesn’t somehow take power from a catenary or similar
Energy density counts for a lot, which is another reason why H2 is a substandard fuel.
Yes, when you do have problems, the fires are quite big, but it’s a rarity for problems to exist, especially with trains that are maintained to a much higher standard than your average car.
The Indian rail network is not known for its high quality maintenance.
That said, I’d trust anyone with batteries over hydrogen, as a general rule.
Fair point about the Indian rail network
Mind you, Hydrogen is actually less dangerous than batteries. When there is a leak, it generally dissipates fairly quickly and fires or similar are quite rare. So in that case… Maybe it would be better if the Indian railways used Hydrogen after all
Hydrogen is actually less dangerous than batteries
Tell that to the Hindenburg.
When there is a leak, it generally dissipates fairly quickly and fires or similar are quite rare
It’s more the risk of hydrogen embrittlement, which can cause sudden catastrophic failure of their containers.
And, broadly speaking, it’s not an issue because hydrogen cells aren’t commonly in use for retail civilian consumption.
As soon as you’ve got a bunch of big tanks zipping around on bumpy tracks at high speeds…
Yup, well producing green one is quite a waste of energy, but it’s clean and that’s fine. And you’re totally correct, storage is really tough, also sitting on a large H2 quantity, I don’t know, I wouldn’t be calm.
I really wish hydrogen will take off, I mean EV is great and simple, but the process of producing batteries are very polluting, yet hydrogen can be scaled almost everywhere.
98% of hydrogen is currently made from fossil fuels.
While it’s possible to make hydrogen from renewable electricity, you immediately lose at least 60% of your energy in the electricity to chemical to electricity conversion steps. For comparison, batteries only lose 5-10% in the round trip charging.
Hydrogen really only makes sense in applications where batteries can’t be used, or efficiency is not relevant. So many companies have publicly announced their new hydrogen vehicles, then quietly stopped using them and started using battery electric vehicles instead.
Hydrogen just costs too much, and the hard limit of chemical efficiency means it will never be cheaper than batteries.
If you produce enough green electricity to bring its price down to zero the efficiency is less concerning.
I saw this problem happen in Chile, they use wind to produce it but they still use fossil fuels alongside of it
Hydrogen is also a very flammable substance that needs special handling.
So is gasoline and battery :(
Unless we somehow master converting stable matter into energy with low start up cost, this is just the physics of energy storage.
Arnt nearly all the trains in India electric? Seems a solution waiting for a problem
This route is in a mountainous region where electrification is very difficult.
Doesn’t sound like something that should be top priority for India though…
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