If efficiency at point of use is faceted in, things get better for electric, bit not enough to bridge the divide.
Hydrogen is difficult to work with, massive compression or cryogenic temperatures. Metal embrittlement is a long term concern.
Comment on TIL the cost of transporting energy around
UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoAt least with H2, leaks are not a direct driver of climate change (apart from wasting energy ofc). Environmental concerns are much less of a factor compared to gas/oil. I think the main concern is to get from electricity to H2 and back. There are approaches to go sunlight -> H2 more or less directly (SunHydrogen currently working on comercialization), but they sit at about 11% sun -> H2 yield, which is still way below normal solar panels (up to 30%). Electrolysis performs much worse iirc
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago 
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 2 weeks ago Hydrogen is difficult to work with, massive compression or cryogenic temperatures. Metal embrittlement is a long term concern.
that’s hearsay. there’s lots of studies about hydrogen pipeline / storage feasibility, such as the ones i’ve linked above. pls stop spreading misinformation.
- absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
No it isn’t.
Oil can be pumped at atmospheric pressure and temperature, it is a little easier to warm it a bit, but not a hard requirement. This is easy to work with.
Electricity is easy to work with, it will stay in the wires and can be switched on and off in milliseconds.
To work with hydrogen, you have to either compress it a lot, or liquefy it. Both have significant challenges.
For example I was working on a hydrogen pilot project, we were using 700 bar compressed hydrogen as the storage mechanism. Getting the compressed gas out of storage was always a pain in the arse, valves would freeze open causing control problems. Perhaps physically larger valving wouldn’t have this problem, but the cooling potential of expanding 700bar gas back to atmosphere is significant. Compressed hydrogen is an explosion risk independent of oxidiser, so you have a double explosion risk, first the compression explosion then the chemical reaction in atmosphere of a spark (likely) is generated by the first. There are a bunch of other issues with it, but these are major ones.
Cryogenic hydrogen has it’s own I issues. I’m not as familiar with it.
Saying hydrogen isn’t difficult to work with is just your lack of experience. Difficult is just engineering challenges, but hydrogen has some unique issues that other options don’t.
electrolysis alone has 80% electric -> hydrogen conversion efficiency minimum, sometimes close to 100%. most solar panels have 20% sunlight -> electric efficiency. so total sunlight -> electric -> hydrogen efficiency is about 20% * 80% = 16%. which might not sound like a lot but remember there’s a ton of sunlight so wasting some doesn’t matter.
it’s more about the economic cost to describe how feasible something is.