Update on the ten houses powered by hydrogen on Utsira in Norway.

[NNadir]

MSNBC reports on the grand experiment to produce hydrogen for ten homes:

Updated: 1:22 p.m. ET Feb 28, 2005
OSLO, Norway - A windblown island off Norway is being used to test ways of overcoming a big drawback of alternative energy: How to store it.

Such renewable energy sources as wind, waves and solar power provide a clean alternative to climate damaging fossil fuels and potentially dangerous nuclear power.

But sometimes the wind dies, the sea calms, and the sun doesn’t shine, leaving those who depend on them for power facing a blackout unless they have a backup supply...

...“It is the first full scale project of this type in the world,” said project manager Paal Otto Eide, whose company is leading the $5.8 million effort.

'Real customers' using technology
The company built two 600-kilowatt wind turbines to use with a hydrogen generator and a fuel cell in providing all the electricity for 10 homes on Utsira, Norway’s smallest municipality with just 240 residents...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4853004/

Just $580,000 per home to install hydrogen electricity. I, for one, am impressed.

Of course, I take some issue with the de riguer reinforcement of the idea - from the same people who have lots of experience calling the War for Halliburton the "War on Terror" - statement that nuclear power is "potentially dangerous" while fossil fuels are merely "climate changing." I actually think that the five million people who die each year from air pollution face more than a "potential danger." Also, I was under the impression that climate change was also "potentially dangerous," but I could be wrong about that. Maybe it will allow for a palm oil industry in Norway.


The residents of Utsira are very happy with their project:

Here is what they say:

The aim is to prove that it is possible to produce an independent and steady supply of renewable energy. For the past year, Mr Austrheim's home and nine others have received their electricity through the plant. The change of supply has not made huge changes to the islanders' daily routine. "Electricity is only electricity," says Haavar Bota, the ferry's chief officer. "It makes no difference for me." "But we have to do something about the environment," says the captain. "It's nice to be part of this project and try to do something about it."

"The light wavers sometimes, but apart from that, it's just like before," reckons Sølvi Austrheim, who is a cook at Utsira's only hotel. "People were a bit concerned that the wind turbines would make a lot of noise, but they don't." "They have a nice design," says her cousin, the captain. "And it has created three jobs at the restaurant - a lot for a small community."

But:

But there have been problems. Last winter, the wind didn't blow for three days in a row - unheard of on Utsira. As the plant can only store hydrogen for two days' consumption, the homes had to get their electricity from the national grid that connects the whole country, the usual way the islanders get their power.

" has been to try to make all the different components work together, as it's never been done before," says Torgeir Nakken, the trial's project manager. "For instance, the fuel cell is a brand new technology." It has also been difficult to control the intensity of the light. "Sometimes lightbulbs flicker a lot," reckons Elling Ellingsen, a stout retired fisherman who was at Mr Austrheim's house enjoying an episode of Desperate Housewives. "My wife says they need to be changed more often, like four or five times in a month. And we have 15 lamps around the house."

Outages have happened as well. On the day we visited, two had apparently occurred. "The light just switches off and goes back up again straight away," says Mr Ellingsen. "I think it happened two, three times last month." "At the moment, this is only an attractive option for remote islands not connected to the main electricity grid," says Ray Eaton from the Department of Trade and Industry, who was visiting Utsira as part of a delegation from the International Energy Agency. The idea is to provide an alternative to diesel, which is expensive and polluting, and is used to power generators often used in remote communities.

The scheme could also be useful for countries that already use a lot of wind power, such as Denmark, to help them regulate their electricity production, because the wind does not blow at the same speed all the time. For this scheme to be extended more widely, it all boils down to money. "The economics are the main problem.

http://www.newbuilder.co.uk/newbuilder/NewsFullStory.asp?ID=845

I, of course, am famous for my as yet disproved contention that the anti-nuclear position is the same as the pro-coal position, pointing as I do to Germany's decision to build lots of coal plants even as it claims that the generation of their grandchildren will have to live without nuclear power.

However this grand experiment with ten homes on a remote Norwegian island could prove me wrong, happily. Can anyone here update me on the plan for the Germans to cancel their new coal plants in favor of wind powered hydrogen plants? Any giant 2000 MW wind powered hydrogen plants on the drawing boards? In Demark maybe? Enquiring minds want to know.

I hear a lot about these ten homes in Norway, but little beyond that. I must be missing something.

[jpak]

1. Update on ChimpCo's PROTOTYPE hydrogen-producing nucular reactors

One will be 200 kW(t) and the other will be 500 kW(t)

and they will cost **you the taxpayers**...

...

...

...

$1.25 BILLION - and they won't produce any electricity!!!

Thank you Dick Cheney!!!!

Oh yeah, the managers of the Utsira project have solved all the bugs they encountered early in the program.

They also are planning a second larger project for another Norwegian island.

Also, it's no big deal to install an additional compressed hydrogen tank to allow for 4 unusual windless days.

Nice try though!!!!

[jpak]

6. $1.25 billion would buy 216 Utsira projects

with 259 MW of wind capacity and serve 2160 homes.

As compared to $1.25 billion for 700 kW of non-electricity-producing hydrogen reactors???

Impressive indeed.

[HongKonger]

2. well...

Just $580,000 per home to install hydrogen electricity

That is ultimately the question that has to be asked.

Why the cost?

For us in the boatbuilding community, hydrogen is more than a pipe dream and it will come down in cost.

http://www.avanteyachts.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=49

[NNadir]

3. Well, it is a pilot facility.

One would expect that the costs would be high.

Generally pilot facilities are way more expensive than commercial facilities. However pilots are generally followed up with plans for scale up with a clear definition of potentials for cost reduction. That is, in fact, why one has a pilot.

Of course, the matter of global climate change is urgent, since it is occuring right now. The world's water supply, among other things, is at risk.

As far as I know, there are no plans to scale this internationally discussed pilot plant, even to the rest of Utsira's residences. But I could be wrong.

Maybe Germany is going to announce within a few days their plans to phase out coal through the use of wind powered hydrogen. Now that would be more worthy of international news than ten houses on a Norwegian island.

[NNadir]

4. Hey I just checked out your link.

It would seem that the hydrogen fuel cell is as expensive as the Norwegian fuel cells, but they have a really cool methanol fuel cell there.

I really thought that the methanol fuel cell would take off, especially on aircraft for computers, where methanol was approved until - this week - all liquids were banned, on the basis of the (phony?) terrorist scare.

Interesting link though.

How common is solar power for marine applications, by the way? That would seem an ideal place to use solar cells and batteries.

[jpak]

5. Update: more dastardly pro-coal Norwegian hydrogen projects

http://193.71.199.52/en/energy/hydrogen/18283.html

<snip>

Røst - hydrogen and wind
The company Energy Development has got similar ideas for the island of Røst as the ones Norsk Hydro might be realizing on Utsira. Just like on Utsira no electricity is produced on Røst, but led by cables from the mainland.

<snip>

The region of Notodden - hydrogen buses
This project is a co-operation between Norsk Hydro Electrolysers, Organic Power and Nettbuss. The partners are aiming for the implementation of hydrogen buses in the region of Notodden - first and foremost on local routes.

<snip>

Western Norway - hydrogen ferries
Hydrogen is considered to be highly suitable as a fuel in other areas of transport as well. Work on the development of both hydrogen driven planes and ships as well as locomotives has been taken on.

<snip>

The energypark in Stavanger
ARNE - Arena for regional planning, business and innovation - is planning a new business area in the Stavanger-region.

<snip>

...and the Evil Schatz Hydrogen Energy Project brought to you by the vile Eco-criminals at Humboldt University...

http://www.humboldt.edu/~serc/trinidad.html

http://www.humboldt.edu/~serc/realworld.html

[Dead_Parrot]

7. It must be said...

...that while I still think a workable "hydrogen economy" is about as a likely as NNadir becoming the next president of Greenpeace, It's nice to see someone putting thier money where thier mouth is (rather than the bold, pointless declarations we normally get): Utsira is an expensive project when your GDP is under $200 billion. Kudos to them...

[NNadir]

8. Of course, it helps if you're a tiny nation pumping oil out of the North

Sea in vast amounts.

Somehow I think that their commitment to the glorious wind future is like all of these projects - window dressing. It's basically pure bullshit to distract attention from the real source of Norwegian wealth.

You can build windmills in trivial amounts - and even better attach them to electrolyzers and pretend you're against fossil fuels. But if you are building new fossil fuel facilities on a grander scale, you're - what's the word I'm looking for here, wait it will come to me, hold on a second, hmmmm, oh yeah, here it is: A FRAUD.

And the ten window dressing houses aside, we have right here at our E&E forum in the current threads a description of where Norway is really investing:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x63941

The fact remains that the hydrogen scam is yet another shell game trying to avoid the real situation, which is clearly that if you are anti-nuclear you are pro-coal. To prove otherwise, a hydrogen would have to be more than a fantastic statement about the worth of a ten household pilot, or some plans on a drawing board. There would have to be, in fact, plans for huge hydrogen plants in Germany, for instance. Guess what? There are no such plans.

A serious investment by Norway would need to be something on the scale of the oil and gas development in the pristine North Atlantic seas.

It's not even close. Norwegians hope that people will look at their five million dollar investment on Utsira and not notice their billions of dollars invested in North Sea - soon to be Arctic sea - oil.

As for my run for President of Greenpeace, I note that these tired hare-brained assholes have come out with a scathing attack on the supplier of 20% of their much ballyhooed (but trivial in exajoules) PV solar cells. BP solar, a unit of BP oil (more window dressing), manufactures 20% of the solar cells in the world:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/solarreport/solar.html

In fact, as of 2004, two of the three largest solar PV suppliers, are in fact, oil companies.

BP Solar International LLC, Sharp Manufacturing Company of America, and Shell Solar Industries LP.

Now Greenpeace - unable to show even a tenth of an exajoule of solar power in the United States - will look even more ridiculous as they demonetize the company that holds up 1/5th of their little game of pretend. Now, I regard Greenpeace people as the epitome of stupidity, as you know, noting that they can't count. Given that they can't count, it may be possible for me to make a claim for the Presidency, but I will never make such a claim, since I'd rather not post on my back a sign that says, "kick me, I'm not too bright."

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NNadir/19

Now, having disposed of my electoral campaign, I don't have a problem with oil companies investing in solar power, but I don't believe for a second that their interest is really clean energy. Their interest is to divert stupid people who will believe anything from their real game. It's one of those "look over there," distractions.

BP owns a solar company, but their real business is bleeding oil on the arctic tundra. Norway's real business is not wind mill powered hydrogen but rather is bleeding oil into the arctic seas and atmosphere.

Thus it's the same with the tiny Norwegian hydrogen game as it is with BP solar. They don't want the world to focus on what they're really doing. Hence the grand splash about Utsira, eagerly swallowed, hook, line and sinker by people who know nothing about energy in general and it's scale in particular. People who believe this crap are about as bright as pickled lutefisk.

Nowhere on this planet is their an exajoule of hydrogen produced from wind power. Denmark exports it's wind excess at bargain basement prices - effectively it dumps its wind energy. This is why Denmark has cancelled plans to expand its wind power production:

http://www.aweo.org/ProblemWithWind.html

Looking at this link, we see that the oil rich Norwegians have actually been looking down their snouts at their less oil endowed Danish brethren:

In 1998, Norway commissioned a study of wind power in Denmark and concluded that it has "serious environmental effects, insufficient production, and high production costs."

Denmark (population 5.3 million) has over 6,000 turbines that produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used in 2002. Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittentency (sic) and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises, and the quick ramping up and down of those that can be would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary "greenhouse" gas). So when the wind is blowing just right for the turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price, or the turbines are simply shut off.

As it is, the overwhelming bulk of the world's hydrogen comes from natural gas and almost all of it is produced for captive use, the captive (synthetic) use of hydrogen being a legitimate industrialized practice. (Note that I support expanding such use to make DME.) But as a motor fuel? An energy storage medium? Steroid crazed governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's hydrogen Hummer aside, the whole game is meant to be decade after decade after decade of demonstration projects that are never industrialized. There won't be such an industry in my lifetime. Why? Because hydrogen is a fuel for fools. It's a dumb idea. Arnie isn't really counting on a "brazillion solar roofs" to make hydrogen. It's a distraction scam for him too.