Have you hear the latest about wind turbines and hydrogen?

Question

My husband works on the commercial wind turbines. We get to read all sort of interesting articles/magazines put out for those who work in the wind turbine industry.

They now have a working prototype of a wind turbine that not only produces energy, but also produces hydrogen. Of course this is on a wind turbine based in the ocean. The prototype is near Denmark.

Wind turbines generate power via the wind. The power is then trasmitted down power lines, and into the power grid. Sometimes wind turbines are generating too much power for the power lines to be able to accept, because the wind is very strong that day.

Now instead of that power being wasted, it's being used at the wind turbine in the ocean to make hydrogen. There is also of course a holding tank for the hydrogen as part of that wind turbine now.

The plan is to have a lot of these hydrogen producing wind turbines in place, and have a boat go out and pick up the "free" hydrogen.

Thoughts, opinions?

Answer 1

It's a perfectly good storage idea, but I can't imagine a windmill ever being sidelined because of too little demand, at least not here in the USA.  It will take decades before wind will be a major part of our power system.  And the railroads will also be re-electrifying, so there will be that much more demand for power 24x7 (and that much less diesel burned.)  A lot more freight is already going to the rails, and that'll increase.

Answer 2

The next step is to combine the hydrogen with C02 extracted from the atmosphere to get alcohol. Methanol, ethanol or isopropyl  will do. Those can be stored and ship well. Unlike crude oil, if the ship happens to sink, they will evaporate and be destroyed by normal atmospheric processes. Since the carbon comes from the atmosphere, burning the alcohol elsewhere actually causes no net increase in global CO2. And, they can be stored to run generators for the times when the wind doesn't blow, preventing hammering the grid, which is never wise.

Answer 3

That's an interesting use of the extra energy on especially windy days.  However, considering that it takes a ton of energy for the electrolysis process to separate hydrogen from water, it can't be producing a whole lot of hydrogen.

Of course, a little "free" hydrogen is certainly better than none.

Answer 4

I figured wind turbines can produce hydrogen, but only but separating hydrogen from oxygen in the ocean water (thus wasting at least some energy via electrolysis).  It also takes a good amount of energy to compress the hydrogen enough to be stored cheaply.

   Therefore, It is likely better just to ship the electricity straight from the turbine to its destination of use than to use it to make hydrogen.  The only real reason I believe it would be helpful is if hydrogen is used to fuel something that is right there (say...an oil well designed to run on hydrogen) or that hydrogen-run appliances and vehicles become cheaper to make/run than electric ones or simply much more common.

   It is a great idea...my only question is, while you are out there in the ocean, why not put in a tidal generator that gets energy from the waves as the tide moves in and out that shares a generator with the wind turbines?

  It would also make more sense to run a wire under the ocean to transmit the electricity to land and turn it to hydrogen there than transport it via a boat (where you need to "waste" energy on fuel to move the boat).  Just an idea.

  It sounds like it has true potential, though...the flip side is convincing people so use smaller cars, appliances, houses...so the energy provided by the prototype will be able to support the energy for lives of several people rather than just a handful.  But virtually all alternative energy sources share this problem vis-a-vis fossil fuels and natural gas (and natural gas is not perfect either as it has increasingly limited supply and thus rising prices).

Answer 5

That might work but hydrogen is just a storage medium, burning hydrogen isn't efficient, it's using it in electrolysis which is.

The problem is that hydrogen is VERY expensive to store and transport. You would spend nearly as much energy getting a ship out to the windmill to pick up the hydrogen as you do using it.

So perhaps when they can make the windmill also convert the hydrogen on the spot, it will even out the kWH output when the mill is not working so hard.

Answer 6

Thats the RIGHT way to do wind power.  

Since the wind cannot be throttled to match the instantaneous demand for electricity there needs to be a means of saving excess capacity, and hydrogen manufacturing by electrolysis is perfect.  The hydrogen can either be burned on site to match demand or put into a distribution pipeline like natural gas.  The current lack of a good means of storage of "excess electricity" as it were is one of the major drawbacks to widescale deployment of wind and solar energy for that matter.

I believe this concept would make wind power "viable" in places where reasonably steady winds are not available.