Hyzon have said that to do long distance hydrogen trucking they can get 1,000 mile range using liquid hydrogen and only need 3 or 4 stops to get across the US.

We are closer to zero carbon and zero pollution heavy trucking than people imagine.

No breakthrough technology needed.

only oxygen is emitted
Sell the oxygen

I thought I might be overstating my case in saying that Plug Power are not taking any electricity from the grid, although pf course their solar arrays will provide much of it.

I thought present costs of electrolysers too high to be run just when solar is available, so am wondering if there is offsets for part of it, as the standards for green hydrogen are quite strict, I believe.

They do claim that their site in Georgia is producing 100% green hydrogen.

I was not really able to sort out definitively what is going on, but did come across this informative map of their existing and planned sites to cover the US, released at the time of their conference call:

https://s21.q4cdn.com/824959975/files/doc_financials/2021/q2/Q2-2021-IR-Letter-FINAL-1.45pm.pdf

@Lad

This is for long distance trucks.

@Lad @sd,
Having a nation-wide network of H2-filling stations for trucks would enable a nation-wide fleet of Plug-in FCV that are Zero-Emission Vehicles that would require only 1/5 the battery capacity of a long-range BEV, thus freeing up enough battery capacity to make 5 times more plug-in EV's. The growth of BEV's right now is limited by battery capacity.
A Plug-in FCV can use grid electricity for 80% of total mileage and only needing H2 for long trips.

With a big-enough fleet of Plug-in FCV that are plugged-in to charge with solar energy during the day and wind at night, they can also be programmed to release electricity to back-up the grid when necessary using the vast H2 storage capacity, thus making a 100%-RE grid possible without requiring fossil-fuel power plants like the coal plants that you are referring to.

With a 100%-RE-grid, we can use the vast energy excess during Springs and Falls to make H2 to help back-up seasons of high electricity demand like Winters and Summers. Without the massive E-storage capacity of H2 to be stored in depleted oil and gas wells, we will not be able to arrive at a 100%-RE grid and a 100%-RE economy.

@Davemart

I did not miss that they were building a 300 MW solar farm. They are planning to use this to power a 120 MW electolyzer. I assume that the 300 MW is the so called "Plate Power" which means that in a good location, averaged over a year, you will have 50 MW. The 300 MW max power is more than the 120 MW electrolyzer power so unless they have local storage, they are going to feed the excess power to the grid and pull power off the grid when there is less than 120 MW available. As 120 MW is greater than the average solar power of about 50 MW, I think that it is safe to say, unless there are only going to operate 8 or 10 hours a day, they are going to be pulling net power off the grid including the power produced by coal in Utah and Nevada.

@Roger Pham

We do not have anything close to a 100% RE grid. At the moment, it is about 20% renewable, 20% nuclear, and 60% fossil fuel and about half of the renewable is about hydro which is not going to grow and is the only dispatchable RE. So, unless we build a lot of storage, we are not going to get to 100% RE or even 50% RE and going from electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity is inefficient and expensive.

@Davemart

Coal is rapidly fading in the US based primarily on economics. With the huge success of fracking (like it or not), it has become cheaper to use natural gas which is also better for the environment than coal. They are actually going to replace coal with natural gas at the 1900 MW power plant in Delta, Utah. Unless you have a lot of storage, you can not reasonably approach 100% RE except where there is a lot of hydro as in Iceland, Norway, northern Quebec, etc. If I was making the decision, I would go with about 60% nuclear, 10% hydro, and the rest wind and solar with some storage. Use the nuclear to make hydrogen when you have excess power.

@sd:

Yeah, I would like loads of nuclear too, but they ain't building it, or rather just one in the UK, although they have said they hope to have Gen 4.

But 10 years ago renewables themselves were very uneconomic, almost everywhere.
I have linked previously that there are substantial grounds for thinking that over the next ten years the cost of storing it in volume will drop in a similar manner.

At the moment electrolysers are not cheap enough to run them for the 2000 hours pa that is all that would be needed for a $300KW electrolysis unit, but they are in China and costs are dropping rapidly with volume elsewhere.

More details of what resources Plug Power is using to produce green hydrogen at its various sites:

Windpower in Virginia, 345MW:

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/07/14/2262627/9619/en/Apex-Clean-Energy-and-Plug-Power-Partner-on-Largest-Green-Hydrogen-Power-Purchase-Agreement-in-the-United-States.html

Hydropower in Pennsylvania:

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/03/30/2201392/9619/en/Plug-Power-and-Brookfield-Renewable-Move-Forward-with-Green-Hydrogen-Plant-in-South-Central-Pennsylvania.html

Hydropower in New York, to power 120MW of electrolysers:

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/02/25/2183008/0/en/Plug-Power-to-Build-North-America-s-Largest-Green-Hydrogen-Production-Facility-in-Western-New-York.html