Three Cheers for Orkney

[ppppenguin]

Oy! I weigh about 80kg

[peter scott]

 Unfortunately, he reckons hydrogen powered vehicles are a dud - using 254kWh per 100km vs about 80kWh/100km for fossil fuels and 15kWh/100km for a Tesla.

-Jeremy

Early days! The Honda Fuel Cell car takes 69kWh / 100km so a match for our current fossil fueled cars. As for the Tesla, are we to ignore the energy in manufacturing its batteries?

Peter

[ppppenguin]

When making comparisons it's not easy to account for all costs. Embedded energy is a very tricky one. Whether you're talking about cars, power stations or houses. Other externalities such as cost of dirty air, mining waste etc are also hard.

Is it better to make a widget here using gas or in Australia using solar and shipping it? I don't know and it's not easy to work it all out.

Burning wood pellets at Drax may make sense. But surely not if they are shipped across the Atlantic.

[pwdrive]

Burning wood pellets at Drax may make sense. But surely not if they are shipped across the Atlantic.

If they weren't shipping pellets they'd be shipping coal.

An island of coal surrounded by a sea of fish....what could possibly go wrong.....

Lawrence.

[ppppenguin]

National Grid are preparing for a carbon-free future: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/article...ce=Adestra&utm_campaign=New%20EandT%20News%20-%20Automation%20FINAL%20-%20MEMBER&utm_medium=Newsletters%20-%20E%26T%20News&utm_content=E%26T%20News%20-%20Members&utm_term=https%3A%2F%2Feandt.theiet.org%2Fcontent%2Farticles%2F2019%2F04%2Fnational-grid-prepped-to-accept-100-per-cent-zero-carbon-sources-by-2025%2F

That's quite a shift from the tradtional top-down grid structure. Everything from improved load management to large scale storage.

[ppppenguin]

Ah yes - Duh! 80 not 800kg!  Still like taking a hefty elderly relative with you everywhere you go...
J

It's not 80kg of dead wieight. It does laod levelling and kinetic energy recovery. It takes energy to accelerate that 80kg and drag it up hills but you get most of it back when going downhill or braking. It also relieves the petrol engine from working ineffiicently when accelerating from standstill.

I suspect it more than pays its way except perhaps when cruising on the motorway. Even then, on the flat at constant speed the extra mass makes little difference.