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[Richard230]

From what I have been reading, is seems like all of the H2 vehicles being built and designed are, or will be, using hydrogen to operate fuel cells that will generate electricity to power an electric motor(s). So in theory, maintenance should be much less and range much longer than using hydrogen to power an ICE.

BTW, the H2 station next to the Skylonda General Store, across from Alice's restaurant is still abandoned and has never been opened or leased to anyone. However, it does have a couple of nice bathrooms at the side of the facility whose access is controlled by the clerk at the store for use when someone who is filling up at their gasoline pumps. If you ever get gas at their expensive pumps, you can ask the clerk for the key to the nice flusher. Or you could go across the street to buy much less expensive gas at the Alice's restaurant station and use their bathrooms - no key needed.

[Stonewolf]

Hydrogen's basicly already dead in Europe, it's come and gone.

Germany put a bunch of money into it and then stopped because it turned out the people making the decisions to do that were getting backhanders from the petro lobby. You basicly don't see any filling stations, I think the UK might have 2. Meanwhile there are EV chargers everywhere and in more and more places. Norway is at 92% of all new cars sold being EVs, you can walk down the street and see a few EVs on any given day meanwhile I saw a Mirai once at a services (in Germany funnily) but it had a big vinyl advertising that H2 was here. Even for trains they've been tried and were determined to be a failure, I've even seen one (in ... Germany, wtf).

And of course, if you actually ask experts working on hydrogen rollout for various things who *aren't* connected to the petro industry they'll tell you that actually supplying it en mass is not practical. They keep trying to push it as a replacement for natural gas in home heating here which is insane because heat pumps are *right there*.

[flynnstig82r]

Hydrogen has an awful chicken-egg problem. EV’s found an end-run around the problem, because L2 chargers are cheap and you can charge at home, so EV’s started their momentum with the ultra-enthusiasts. When there were enough on the road, it justified DCFC stations, but only with generous government incentives.

With hydrogen, though, you need a nationwide network of multi-million dollar pumps, and every hydrogen vehicle needs to fill at a station. No one’s going to build the pumps without the cars and no one’s going to buy the cars without the pumps, even if you can solve all of the inherent problems with the fuel and their pumps. We already have a nationwide network of gasoline pumps with all of the safety mitigation, transport, and infrastructure figured out. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to make gas vehicles more efficient than to abandon all that infrastructure for hydrogen.

Hydrogen also the problem of natural gas, which is used heavily in hydrogen production. Once you factor in all the efficiency losses from well to wheels, H2 is not all that much more sustainable than just combusting natural gas, and we already have a distribution and infrastructure network for that (albiet mostly for private fleets of commercial vehicles). CNG vehicles are a lot more feasible than FCEV (fuel cell EV’s), yet a transition to CNG has never happened in the many decades that CNG vehicles have been produced.

The clear path forward is the one that’s already happening: More EV’s, more-efficient ICEV’s, and better alternatives to driving. It’s really that simple. Other flashes in the pan like hydrogen are not real solutions and are nothing more than industries looking for free subsidies to put in their pockets.

[Specter]

That's pretty much what all this is all about.
The Green New Deal.  they threw a trillion or three dollars on the table and said, do A,B, or C to qualify and you can grab a handfull of this money, so everyone is reinventing their own personal Green wheel to get a piece of that money that's been written off already.  If I had a way I'd be doing it too, it's my fucking taxes that paid for that shit, I want some of my money back!

Now's the time to get a foot in the door.  Go solar, just get one panel put on your roof by a certified electrician. yes it will cost a bit of money, the green scam is NOT cheap for anyone, BUT, once you got the 'permission' and the panel up there, now you are in the system.  NOW you shop and do it yourselfers you have a real bargain.  Get the stuff whole sale, put it up, and get your 30 percent back.

I race motorcycles.  I sell coffee online.  My bike is electric,  My coffee roaster is electric.  They can run off solar.  Race Day Roasters, pay to charge my bike, pay to advertise, pay to bring me from point A to B to sell my coffee, I can roast on the spot, roast using solar power in Real time, I am REALLY green, and it's a big selling point... plus Ill get the 30 percent and maybe even more back in incentives from the govt for doing it.  Still researching but if i can get them to help pay for my bike charging / coffee roasting and my romps to Jennings, Roebling road, CMP, Atlanta, Alabama,you get the idea, why not.  Race during the day, roast coffee in the afternoon, sleep, drink a hot cup of coffee the next morning, and repeat.

Aaron 

I just thought of something,  standing over a hot roaster in full leathers, I better invest in a solar fan too 

[Richard230]

My daughter installed solar panels on her roof, along with a 10KWH storage battery, which cost about $46K. She got into the system before PG&E changed their billing plan to screw over new solar customers so that they couldn't get paid much (f anything) for the power that they put back into the net. Then she went all electric and heat pump everything, even her clothes drier. This summer her electric bill has been averaging under $2 a month! 

If you install solar now, the savings is not nearly that much due to the new PUC-approved rate plan. That has cut back most home solar projects and put a lot of solar panel installation companies out of business. And new tariffs on Chinese panels didn't help the industry any, either.

[Stonewolf]

My neighbour had his whole roof done with solar and a battery put in for £10k. Gets cheaper every year.

[Richard230]

My neighbour had his whole roof done with solar and a battery put in for £10k. Gets cheaper every year.

Not if you are in the SF Bay Area. Everything is expensive here.   

[Specter]

The key is not so much selling back the electric but using ONLY electricity you make if you can do it.  Get as much panel as you can and battery to store it.  There are still some decent US panels to be had for under 50 cents a watt retail price.  I can get them for about 37 cent wholesale.  The ROI literally is like 4 or 5 years now.  Batteries are expensive yes, but roi on them say 13 years, BUT.. how much is NOT losing 1k worth of frozen food worth to you when the storms take the power out.  How much is having AC in august when the storm takes the grid out?  If it's installed correctly the panels should easily withstand 130 plus mph winds.    I added to my system after the fact, I have up to 20 kw of can be mobile / portable panels, more to come soon, so if a bad storm IS anticipated, they get brought into the house with me, if I still have a house standing after the storm, then literally I throw them out in the lawn, hook them together and plug into inverter and I got power again.  total time maybe 3 hours to lay out 10k of panels.  Enough to run the ac all night, and other amenities.  worse case the ones get torn off the roof, these will keep me in power until things get better.  Fill the bike tires with the go glop, and the panels keep the bike charged for what running around I may need for what food there is to find, meds, whatnot.  I have already sourced those flat proof tires so if i have to  run o ver shit it won't kill them.  Im sure the ride is horrible but in emergency conditions, comfy is not a priority.

Another critical path is not so much generation but conservation.  Pay the bit of extra money for the heat pump water heater, those pay for themselves in 2 to 4 years, and have a warranty of 10 years, a no brainer there.  heat pump dryer, not quite as efficient BUT is a ton less loading on your inverter so you save a LOT there NOT needing the excess panels for the high demand times.  BTW the efficient ac's  the mitsubishi split systems, gather the water they take out of the atmosphere,  the water normally dumped outside.  there is your emergency water to drink / shower in.  Run thru a carbon filter and a cap of bleach per gallon to sterilize or just boil and you are good to go.

Aaron

[Richard230]

Last night my daughter's home solar/battery backup net went out. Here is the message that they received when the outage was reported:

"This site had a power outage tonight and the system was not able to power the backup loads. Power was cycling on and off before going completely off. When the grid came back up we were able to get the IQ System Controller into Manual Override. The IQ System Controller is not communicating. I started a remote provisioning program that will try to get the devices communicating. If the remote provision is not successful we will need someone on site to provision the devices through the Installer Toolkit. We would also advise running a functional validation to test the system's ability to go off grid. You can also contact us to look into the IQ System Controller once we have communication going again."

These complicated electronic systems are great as long as they keep working and as long as the companies that built and installed them are still around and haven't gone out of business. But will they last as long as you want them to?   

[DonTom]

Last night my daughter's home solar/battery backup net went out.

I have a Tesla Powerwall at this house with a 13.5 KWH battery. I can set by a Smartphone how much I want to charge it as well as how much to use it. Also, when for each. Very configurable.


IOW, if I expect an outage because of poor weather or the so-called  PG&E safety outages, I can charge it more in advance. I can charge it from a solar or the grid, or a combination of each.


But perhaps the main advantage is I can charge it when the rates are not peak and use the powerwall during the peak rate times.


As I am sure you know PG&E has been getting rather ridiculous with their rate increases. I have wondered if part of the reason is they lose too much money from those with solar. But they also have all those lawsuits and tree-cutting expenses to deal with.  I see a lot of their tree trimming in this area.


-Don-  Auburn, CA

[Richard230]

The Enphase system also uses a app to track their entire system, but it didn't help in this case. All it did was to let them know that the system was off-line. After a two hour conversation with an Enphase representative, it is finally back working, but the installer still needs to come out and reboot the system to make it feel better. 

[Stonewolf]

"It uses an app" and "it went out because of a power issue" sounds like your service is controlled in the cloud which is a pretty critical weakness.

[Richard230]

I just heard that their solar power system is off again.  It goes on and off a few times and then just dies.  Hopefully they can get someone out tomorrow to fix it. Perhaps it could be an issue with a fault in the Enphase computer programming. Or maybe the system was automatically updated with new firmware via the internet or the cloud.  You know how that can be.   

[Specter]

I am very familiar with how Enphase runs their stuff.  NOT impressed at all, and people are going to learn the hard way they got schnookered.

Their inverters are very sensitive and like to dance when trying to reconnect, this is enough to cause them to trip each other off sometimes, so they'll all fiddle fuck around for a few seconds until your solar grid array trips itself offline again for another 5 minute timeout.  If you are in a situation where there is no grid and you are trying to run just off your battery and/ the system, and SP inverters, yah good luck with that one, getting everything to synch and play nice.

The thing that pisses me off the most is they want to sell people this total bullshit package,  just back the entire house up, turn off the fucking water heater and be DONE with it, just stop with the sub panels, moving this, that and the next thing over to the 'backup' panel.  Oh gee, you just paid 40k for panels that in an emergency will power a fridge, a lamp, and an oscillating fan... for.  some of the night.  Unfortunately most people are not savvy enough to realize they are being sold garbage, at a horrible price that they are going to end up paying 10x what it was worth.  Oh but it's interest free!!  No it isn't .. they fucked you with an 'origin fee' of up to 10 - 12 percent that they quietly baked into your hurry and buy it today only price.

WHY can't I monitor my stuff LOCALLY?   WHY do I have to log into your web page to see what MY systems doing?  Oh it's free!!!  Until they want to charge you 5 bucks a month to monitor your stuff, and you have no other way to do so w/o your own metering.  Or wait until they want to charge you a monthly 'fee' and if you disagree, they turn your inverters off.  Sorry, ive seen too much corruption in this solar market over the decades, I do NOT trust any of them one bit.

Im not dumping on you for getting their products, you honestly didn't know, im dumping on THEM for selling you that shit, that now needs a tech to come out and 'bless' to make it turn back on.   My friend has their shit, when it dies, it takes an everage of 3 to 4 weeks for a tech to become available to come out and fix it....  thats 3 to 4 weeks of you not getting power from the system you paid a healthy price for !!

I feel even sorrier for the clowns who went with this greenway or whatever that scam is called, who third partied the scandal.  In a few years they go away, YOU are stuck paying the bank for the loan YOU took out for the stuff.. which does not work now.  Enphase doesn't care, your contract was with greenway, NOT enphase... but im sure they will be happy to 'retrofit' some new stuff on it, so they WILL service it now.....

Aaron

[Richard230]

The only choice for backup battery systems that my daughter and her husband were offered by the local installer was Enphase or Tesla batteries. I think they chose Enphase because Tesla batteries apparently didn't have a very good reputation according to their research. At the time Enphase seemed like a new player in the market so they went with that outfit. But, it hasn't been all that easy. When something goes wrong, Enphase blames the solar panel installer and the installer blames Enphase. Eventually, they both end up blaming PG&E, of course.