Oil Down Again

[rabbidrabbit]

According to a quick Google search, costs per KW to produce energy for nukes is between 3.5-5 cents.  That does make it pretty competitive.  I'm not saying its the solution but it has a significant potential given a few improvements.  I would much rather get my energy from a local source than someone who is happy using my money to kill my family.

1 kg of hydrogen has about the same energy as 1 gallon of gasoline.

At 10c per kw/h, it costs about $6 just for the electricity to produce 1 kg of hydrogen. That's without counting capital costs or profit.

And that kg of hydrogen is a gas. It needs to be heavily compressed or liquefied to make it useable in a car. About $1.20 - $2 to compress or liquefy the hydrogen.

Even with economy of scale, about $10 for the same energy as a gallon of gasoline.

That's why they are looking at fuel cells for cars. They have the potential to be 2.5 times as efficient as a petrol engine, so it could be as little as $4 for enough hydrogen to drive a car as far as a gallon of gasoline. Fuel cells are currently very expensive and nowhere near efficient enough, though.

[CAP1]

Filled up today in Broken Arrow, Ok. for $3.40 a gallon

cheapest in south jersey so far is $3.53

[CAP1]

Filled up today in Broken Arrow, Ok. for $3.40 a gallon

funny thing......when they raise the price immediatly when they hear that oil goes up, and i do understand why. they need to price their product acording to what it;s going to cost them to re-supply.

 but then it should make sense that when it goes down, then they should be lowering their prices just as fast, for the same reason.

[CAP1]

they invented something called photovoltaic cells, they use sun light to turn water into hydrogen, look up a company called honda.

bmw and saturn too

[Getback]

Filled up today in Broken Arrow, Ok. for $3.40 a gallon

You rotten son of a gun. Our gas here in Indy shot up 20 cents because of the pipeline catching fire. Even this morning after it dropped again it was down only about 5 cents.

[Holden McGroin]

You are looking at one option and dismissing out of hand. 

No, just putting John's PV idea in perspective estimating the cost of PV solar.  Ther may be somebody out there who will do it.

[rabbidrabbit]

Thanks, and I appreciate the perspective.  Whats your thoughts on nuke generated Hydrogen?  Using Nashwans breakdowns it seems expensive but looking at other published cost estimates, it seems like a viable solution if there were dual fuel or infrastructure changes.

Another note Nashwan, are you sure about 1.20 to 2.00 just to compress?  Wouldn't running a steam powered industrial compressor at a nuke plant be in the order of a few cents per gallon?  You have virtually endless and very cheap steam off the reactor and no loss for transport if connected.  Unless I'm wrong, one of the biggest costs of nukes is regulatory and licensing.

For a homebuilt option...  I have natural gas piped to my house.  How much would it really cost to power a natural gas car?  Gas costs is .77 per therm.

[Nashwan]

I don't think you can just take the cost of a nuclear powerplant as baseline for electricity. Even if you do, you then have to allow for the costs of transporting the hydrogen from the nuke plant to the filling stations. It would probably be cheaper to transport the electricity via the grid and make the hydrogen on site.

Compressing the gas isn't as satisfactory as liquefying it either, because you don't get as much range with compressed hydrogen. Compressed to 10,000 psi you need about 30 litres of tank space for the same energy as 1 gallon of gasoline. That's about 8 times as bulky. Even liquefied hydrogen needs almost 15 litres to equal a gallon of gasoline.

[Holden McGroin]

Thanks, and I appreciate the perspective.  Whats your thoughts on nuke generated Hydrogen? 

Nuke and wind power are probably the only reasonable way right now to produce Hydrogen.

Wind because thw wind (at least in the Columbia River area) picks up at night, just when the electricity demand falls.  Last night we were producing over 1500 MW peak generation in the four states I have information on.  Right now we are doing just shy of 1000MW.   We were probably giving some away last night.

Producing Hydrogen or water pump storage could take the peak generation and store that energy for later use.  Storing it in hydrogen form might make some sense.

Nuclear plants like to run at base load and don't produce CO2 or acid rain.  Turn them on and leave them at capacity and they like to draw a straight line power production curve.  They don't changing load too much.  At night when the grid requires less power, the power the nuke plant produces in excess of the grid demand could go to hydrogen production.  The nuke plant would like that.

 

[rabbidrabbit]

Like us, many people don't need range for many tasks.  I'm not saying its preferable but let me give an example.  We have 3 vehicles for my wife and I.  She commutes about 50 miles per day and I work from home for the most part.  Our Pick up acts as a spare vehicle, transporter of "stuff" and towing for our boat.  If you look at our usage profile we could easily do with one of our vehicles with somewhat limited range ~ 100 miles if it was economically viable.  While I don't mind burning gas, I do mind paying foreign sources money especially when it amounts to extortion to fund international terrorism.  If I could plug a car into electrical or natural gas outlet in my garage and pay a local source I would do so.  For us, I think the largest cost is conversion.  It would costs us substantially more to convert than operate.  If there was a multifuel vehicle available next time we purchase that gave us an option we would take it.

The short side of the argument is most people don't drive more than 20 miles per day.  The catch for many is the potential need for a longer trip and how to replenish if needed as many lack extra vehicles.   

[Speed55]

funny thing......when they raise the price immediatly when they hear that oil goes up, and i do understand why. they need to price their product acording to what it;s going to cost them to re-supply.

 but then it should make sense that when it goes down, then they should be lowering their prices just as fast, for the same reason.

A friend of mine told me this when i asked the same question, true or not, i don't know, but it makes sense.

What if the gas station filled all it's tanks at the higher rate.   If they sell at a deflated price, then they are going to lose profits.  
So what happens is that they wait until the next refill and then adjust the prices.

[Holden McGroin]

I assume your cost was .77 Euros... is your therm the same as an english therm or is there a metric therm?

If it is the same,

a therm is 100,000 btu

a gallon of gas has about 125,000 btu

125,000 / 3.785 = 33,025 btu

so 3 litres per therm.

By heat amount, switching to Nat gas look pretty good.  

[rabbidrabbit]

I live near Seattle so I'm assuming English therm and dollars..

So..  I'm paying .77 cents per therm delivered to my house via pipe.  It currently powers my heat, hot water cooktop etc and could be plumbed out to my garage or any other point to use as a refueling point.  Given 1 gallon of gasoline = 125,000 BTU's then I'm paying about 96 cents per 125,000 BTU's for Natural Gas VS. around 400 cents per gallon for Gasoline.  It sounds like a pretty compelling argument if my conversion or adaption costs were reasonable.  An added bonus would be the efficiency of refueling at home instead of driving to a gas station.   What am I missing?

[Holden McGroin]

 

I was looking at your avatar and though I was talking to some guy from Norwegia.

[evenhaim]

7 nis a liter here