absGeekNZ

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.

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.

I don’t get why materials for HVDC are so much higher than everything else. Towers and cables are relatively cheap, the substation hardware is not, but neither are pumping stations with all of the safety requirements.

Also why only 500kV when there are 1.2MV systems in the world. Not that it would make much difference since the bulk of the cost is down to materials.

I didn’t see the amortisation time in my quick skim through.

I know in NZ the compliance cost to get a pipeline through would kill any project that tried to do this.

Obviously leaks etc are ignored in this model, but they at a significant contributor to climate change.

Never heard of it.

How good is it, compared to duckduckgo?