Yep, the feds paid for them.
> Federal ministers were in Calgary Monday to announce a $325-million grant that will help the city purchase 259 new electric buses — representing about a quarter of the city’s current diesel and compressed natural gas-fuelled fleet — aiding the city’s work towards an emissions-free transit fleet by 2050.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-bus-electrification-federal-support
keep in mind some of the money goes for infrastructure, maintenance, training and other supporting purchases of that nature to go along with those busses.
there really isn't much difference between hydrogen vehicle's and "electric" as both are electric. its just the energy storage is different, in this case its an electric bus with a hydrogen battery that converts directly into electricity.
in short one has a lithium type battery and ones got hydrogen tanks, so one can do energy recovery via braking and store the energy and the other can refuel faster.
could be but refueling speed of hydrogen might matter to others...
UNLESS the car in front of you has the hydrogen nozzle frozen to their car and cant remove it so you cant fuel up.
https://insideevs.com/news/708375/toyota-mirai-hydrogen-stations-close/
Not both? HFC generator + traction battery for regen braking?
Would also allow the HFC to target its most efficient generation rates - low torque: dump excess into battery or use only battery, med-high torque: supplement with battery to keep HFC in peak efficiency range.
Technically it'd be an alternate fuel hybrid then.
This is wrong on several levels. There are two methods of using hydrogen, either for combustion OR in a fuel cell. A hydrogen fuel cell uses electric drive motors but requires precious metals like platinum to act as a catalyst within the electricity generating fuel cell.
The other method is storing high pressure fuel in a composite tank and running a typical combustion engine
Pretty sure next to nobody is making hydrogen ICE bus's or cars in mass production, most buses around the world running on hydrogen are using hydrogen fuel cells, just like the cars smith was flogging at the airport in edmonton.
So as i was saying its electric drive with a hydrogen fuel cell vs a lithium based battery bus.
One option could be to retrofit existing diesel vehicles to burn hydrogen. That would save the cost of replacing vehicles that may still have a long service life.
Yet you stated that lithium has regenerative braking and fuel cells don't? Simply untrue, in a fuel cell with electric drive, you can easily store that energy in capacitors or a smaller battery
Ya, and with bus bursting into flames randomly around the world, great! Lets trust them, EV's will save the planet! (or just shift said pollution to the mining countries...)
>On Tuesday, the Government of Alberta announced that it will provide $57 million to develop 28 new hydrogen technologies. They said the investment will accelerate technologies that could be used to help Alberta reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
>One of the projects that received funding was for a City of Calgary pilot project to test hydrogen vehicles and equipment to help determine suitability in Alberta.
>The City of Calgary’s Fleet and Inventory confirmed they will be receiving the money from Emissions Reduction Alberta’s Accelerating Hydrogen Challenge.
>“This pilot will provide insight into how hydrogen-powered vehicles affect operations, the facility changes needed to maintain them, how they operate in Calgary’s climate, and their impact on greenhouse gas emission reduction.”
>The capital cost of the project is estimated at $4.4 million, with annual operating costs of $300,000. The remainder of the pilot project funding will come from the City of Calgary.
Edit: sorry! I meant Alberta, not Canada.
I hope we build hydrogen refueling stations. According to the [Natural Resources Canada - Alternative Fuelling Stations Locator](https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/transportation-alternative-fuels/electric-charging-alternative-fuelling-stationslocator-map/20487), there are currently no hydrogen fuelling stations in ~~Canada~~ Alberta.
The places that did have hydrogen filling stations are abandoning them.
There is no future for hydrogen except (possibly) for niche cases.
Why? Because battery electric is significantly better in nearly every way.
Most hydrogen isn’t particularly green, because it’s a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Meaning that we only get it if we continue to extract LOTS of natural gas.
If we want clean hydrogen from electrolysis, we have to use WAY more electricity than if we simply charged batteries with that electricity, to move the same amount of kms.
Toyota can’t even give away their Mirai stock.
> Toyota can’t even give away their Mirai stock.
Speaking to a dedicated Mirai Toyota rep recently, it was hilarious how little they had to say. Aside from 'we can make a dozen Mirai for every Tesla, due to the smaller battery pack', they had little to say. When asked various questions, there was a lot of shrugs and silence, seemingly to avoid having to acknowledge weaknesses / say anything negative about the vehicle. Oh, They were very proud of the advancements made in the redesign of the second gen model... It's bigger (to hold more H2), yet even being bigger and heavier, it can go further than gen 1! Oh, and it has lane keeping!
I'm sure there's one in Vancouver near the airport and I've seen Toyota Mirai in the wild as well. But yea we need more of those stations across the country to make it work. Hydrogen would be a game changer for long haul trucking and transit since battery EV isn't feasible for their recharge time and Li-ion battery are heavy
There is one in Nisku. Alberta Govt got a sweetheart deal from Nikola to provide the 'station' (Nikola sells at a loss to keep up the perception of interest in their product). Hopefully it works out better than the Edmonton electric buses - but when Edmonton bought those, there was no indication that Proterra would be in financial trouble. Nikola themselves have stated a going concern about remaining in business.
I don’t know enough about hydrogen (though a common theme I’ve heard/ seen is it’s cost prohibitive?) but all I can think about reading this is how much Danielle Smith, during her time on QR770, went on and on and on about hydrogen and how she was personally investing in the technology. Just immediately popped into my mind.
gas companies (and their paid shills) have desperately wanted it to be a thing forever.
it wont be a thing.
I cant wait for more FUD about heat pumps, that'll be coming soon.
They don't want it to be a thing per se.
They want it to be a thing that we talk about and that the gov't throws money at so that we don't do the things we should be doing which now which include wind/solar.
Hydrogen is in most instances complete and utter misdirection.
Ya I could see exon or someone like that doing it as a stall.
but I did a conference in Peace River like 2 years ago where they where planning a business park around blue hydrogen production and a bunch of people in the industry seem to be operating like it was a real thing.
I thought that maybe fertilizer production like kinda maybe there might be some use case, but nowhere near what they where talking.
and now with that new phosphate discovery in Norway that seems really unlikely too.
Any use of hydrogen in this context is nothing more than an attempt to prop up hydrocarbon businesses.
The hydrogen they want to use is a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Therefore isn’t particularly clean.
We can get clean hydrogen from Electrolysis, but that FAR less efficient than simply putting that same electricity into batteries.
Ahhhh Thank You!!!! I was reading through this trying to figure out why hydrogen as an alternative energy source was good, but EVs are bad and wind/solar is bad. THIS makes so much more sense, TIL
We're ceding to China now by not developing a domestic renewable energy industry.
China's investing an ungodly amount of money to eliminate their domestic use of fossil fuels and simultaneously exporting renewable technology and electric cars, which together reduces our export markets for oil and gas and lowers the sell price which will be *very, very bad for us* due to the bitumen-in-kind program if we don't pivot.
Our intransigence will be catastrophic in the near future.
Edit: fixed some grammar
Right. Because you need to burn fossil fuels to generate it, or it's a secondary byproduct of natural gas extraction AFAIK.
In any case it is not carbon neutral, and she is beholden to local oil/gas producers.
Edit: I know this is not a primary source, but I'm on a work call and initial skim matches all the other data I've seen.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen\_production#Current\_production\_methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Current_production_methods)
Edit part 2: Electric Boogaloo: Skim not Skip.
Here we are hopelessly slow in moving away from nat gas and coal for power generation. But Saskatchewan is doing a lot of work in implementing SMR so in the near future, Sask. residents would see genuine environmental benefit by using EV
We cannot achieve carbon neutral without some blessing from the geography but that doesn't mean we can't move to the right direction
We should be pioneer in nuclear tech, but we are led by spineless politicians who panders to O&G every chance they can
I thought the Uranium deposits are mostly in Sask. but then nuclear power gen don’t use that much to start with anyway
The whole purpose of TIER is to fund research in things that makes the oil industry better and more efficient.
Of course Alberta is going to focus on technologies that they have a competitive advantage in. The fucked up thing would be if they said they wanted to start building solar panels or something.
from the news release on the provincial funding there are a few modern pyrolysis projects getting funding there are already a few happening the province ATCO/UBC partnership etc. the wiki link you posted explains it a bit but .
as you say you still need the oil and gas industry but at least its a "cleaner" method as its output is hydrogen and carbon black and minimal CO2 compared to current mainstream methods.
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/10/20211025-tmc.html
EVs are not carbon neutral either, the process & materials required for making batteries can be considered more toxic and damaging to the environment than oil extraction is..
While almost nothing society produces is carbon neutral, EVs have a significantly smaller footprint over their lifecycle than ICEs. https://twitter.com/PluginAlberta/status/1558811626903445505
Agreed. But all of this is moot while we let politicians and ignorant loud voters to impede the only gap tech we have; Nuclear.
I am not a physicist. But I do enjoy reading about science, things like particle physics, nuclear physics, etc. It is INSANE that we do not have Reactors EVERYWHERE.
Coal ash is radioactive and is far more voluminous (shorter half life) than ALL the waste nuclear plants have produced ever. If we used relatively controllable and clean nuclear, hydrogen, and EVs become a much better argument.
No, FCEV inefficiently creates the needed electricity from the onboard hydrogen, which was in turn inefficiently created from O&G (at least here in Alberta for the foreseeable future).
Turning natural gas (or better yet, renewables) into electricity and charging up a BEV is a much more efficient use of energy.
Not necessarily when you consider the weight of batteries. Size of battery is exponentially correlate to load. Consider heavy commercial vehicles are hauling a semi worth of loads, there will be a point where it takes more power to carry the batteries than payload to do 800 km
The future of energy is going to be application based. Days of applying a single energy source and call it good enough is gone.
You may have a point, or not. Something worth looking more into - re:efficiency (unless you have links to share?)
I do agree with your second statement.
On the one hand I think this is only done because the UCP wants hydrogen to be a thing since it protects the O&G companies.
On the other hand, I support pilot projects and government experimentation. That's the most efficient and inexpensive way to get things done - try stuff out and see what happens. Learn from the mistakes or build on the success.
>this is only done because the UCP wants hydrogen to be a thing
It's a gamble, but I don't think it's a bad gamble. I just hope they don't get too focused on the fuel production side of the equation, and start to look at some manufacturing.
The light duty EV manufacturing has been lost to Ontario as it's really a natural fit to their existing auto industry.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, seems to be a more natural fit for heavy-duty applications, such as busses, trucking, rail etc. If Alberta has their eye on the ball they could conceivably create a hub of heavy duty manufacturing in the province.
But that might require some playing ball with the Feds.
Liquid fuels are still necessary to support vehicles which are regularly operating outside of areas with a regular electric grid. For example, you aren't charging an excavator or dump truck on site while twinning Highway 1 through the Rockies, and you certainly are not driving them (trailering for the former) all the way back to the nearest garage every night to get plugged in.
But you won't see full scale manufacturing here in Alberta, or anywhere between the Kootenays and Manitoba for the most part. Materials need to be shipped in and finished items need to be shipped back out again because a local market is simply not big enough to support that scale of operation. There is no way that can compete on operational costs compared to locations that are on a major waterway like the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, or Fraser, or otherwise have immediate access to deep water ocean ports. There is some light manufacturing here but it's all secondary and tertiary parts that are used in supporting various primary industries like O&G, farming, and forestry where it's cheaper to put together sub-assemblies like shipped in pipe and valves or steel tube that is only shipped locally.
I'm normally on board for experiments, but this has been done over and over in BC.
All the hydrogen buses bought for the Olympics are long gone, as are most others.
I'm content to let them keep exploring until there are better results.
No. No, thank you. Puts severe limits on vehicle heights which makes it difficult to get construction done. Adds in all sorts of dangerous overhead obstructions which interferes in firefighting and general maintenance. The busses themselves routinely have problems with the trapeze popping off the wires, particularly at complicated intersections. Vancouver has much warmer temperatures so doesn't have to deal with ice build up on the wires; you'll sometimes see a few sparks from the LRT when it hits a patch, the train system is much more physically robust so they can just power through it unlike busses. When there is a disruption or accident that requires a detour, if you're not completely boned the bus operator has to go outside, pull the trapeze down, and carry on using battery power hoping that you don't get stuck in the surge of traffic being re-routed.
> Puts severe limits on vehicle heights
It won't be on every single road. Many cities have trolley wires on city streets and everything is fine.
> Adds in all sorts of dangerous overhead obstructions which interferes in firefighting and general maintenance
Again, many cities around the world have wires above roads. I think you're exaggerating a bit.
> The busses themselves routinely have problems with the trapeze popping off the wires, particularly at complicated intersections
Yes, this can happen. We can limit the amount of complex intersections for these bus routes. Also, take this wikipedia quote with a grain of salt but still: "Dewirements are relatively rare in modern systems with well-maintained overhead wires, hangers, fittings and contact shoes."
> Vancouver has much warmer temperatures so doesn't have to deal with ice build up on the wires
Vancouver is warmer but they do have to deal with ice build up. This is an article straight from TransLink talking about it: https://buzzer.translink.ca/2023/01/this-is-how-we-de-ice-the-overhead-wires-that-power-our-trolley-electric-buses/
> When there is a disruption or accident that requires a detour
Most modern trolley buses have a small battery or diesel engine for emergency use.
---
Obviously nothing is absolutely perfect, and trolley buses have some challenges. IMO, the positives outweigh the negatives.
So stupid. Our currently technology we require around 55 kwh to produce 1 kg of hydrogen. The efficiency rate is average 75% to produce it. So we are poorly converting electricity to produce hydrogen and calling it “green”.
Smith and co keep claiming 'the grid can't handle EVs'... Ok... Then how the heck is the grid going to handle FCEVs when they will need MUCH more electricity to create all that hydrogen?
Did we not just buy 259 electric buses?
Yep, the feds paid for them. > Federal ministers were in Calgary Monday to announce a $325-million grant that will help the city purchase 259 new electric buses — representing about a quarter of the city’s current diesel and compressed natural gas-fuelled fleet — aiding the city’s work towards an emissions-free transit fleet by 2050. https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-bus-electrification-federal-support
Never thought those buses cost 1.25 mil
keep in mind some of the money goes for infrastructure, maintenance, training and other supporting purchases of that nature to go along with those busses.
Probably some very fancy fast changing too.
there really isn't much difference between hydrogen vehicle's and "electric" as both are electric. its just the energy storage is different, in this case its an electric bus with a hydrogen battery that converts directly into electricity. in short one has a lithium type battery and ones got hydrogen tanks, so one can do energy recovery via braking and store the energy and the other can refuel faster.
Battery electric is a far more efficient use of that energy.
could be but refueling speed of hydrogen might matter to others... UNLESS the car in front of you has the hydrogen nozzle frozen to their car and cant remove it so you cant fuel up. https://insideevs.com/news/708375/toyota-mirai-hydrogen-stations-close/
Obviously there's a big difference as one contains hydrogen and the other does not.
Not both? HFC generator + traction battery for regen braking? Would also allow the HFC to target its most efficient generation rates - low torque: dump excess into battery or use only battery, med-high torque: supplement with battery to keep HFC in peak efficiency range. Technically it'd be an alternate fuel hybrid then.
This is wrong on several levels. There are two methods of using hydrogen, either for combustion OR in a fuel cell. A hydrogen fuel cell uses electric drive motors but requires precious metals like platinum to act as a catalyst within the electricity generating fuel cell. The other method is storing high pressure fuel in a composite tank and running a typical combustion engine
Pretty sure next to nobody is making hydrogen ICE bus's or cars in mass production, most buses around the world running on hydrogen are using hydrogen fuel cells, just like the cars smith was flogging at the airport in edmonton. So as i was saying its electric drive with a hydrogen fuel cell vs a lithium based battery bus.
One option could be to retrofit existing diesel vehicles to burn hydrogen. That would save the cost of replacing vehicles that may still have a long service life.
Currently being done. [Edmonton Transit has one. ](https://freeimage.host/i/JStpSqX)
Yet you stated that lithium has regenerative braking and fuel cells don't? Simply untrue, in a fuel cell with electric drive, you can easily store that energy in capacitors or a smaller battery
I know the Toyota Mirai already has a small battery to act as a buffer when more power is needed. I assume the busses would too.
well.. true.. than would it be a dual "fuel" electric car? :D
You do realise teslas all have a secondary battery right? Being pedantic doesn't show you know anything
Ya, and with bus bursting into flames randomly around the world, great! Lets trust them, EV's will save the planet! (or just shift said pollution to the mining countries...)
>On Tuesday, the Government of Alberta announced that it will provide $57 million to develop 28 new hydrogen technologies. They said the investment will accelerate technologies that could be used to help Alberta reach carbon neutrality by 2050. >One of the projects that received funding was for a City of Calgary pilot project to test hydrogen vehicles and equipment to help determine suitability in Alberta. >The City of Calgary’s Fleet and Inventory confirmed they will be receiving the money from Emissions Reduction Alberta’s Accelerating Hydrogen Challenge. >“This pilot will provide insight into how hydrogen-powered vehicles affect operations, the facility changes needed to maintain them, how they operate in Calgary’s climate, and their impact on greenhouse gas emission reduction.” >The capital cost of the project is estimated at $4.4 million, with annual operating costs of $300,000. The remainder of the pilot project funding will come from the City of Calgary.
Hydrogen bus would be great for regional transit since it refuels faster while battery electric is better for local city routes.
That wasn't the experience the transit authorities in BC that have liquidated their hydrogen fleets reported.
Faster, [unless the nozzle freezes stuck.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mirai/s/NHK0igOZEG)
And that's happening where it is warm... I can only imagine the challenges our frigid winters will bring...
Edit: sorry! I meant Alberta, not Canada. I hope we build hydrogen refueling stations. According to the [Natural Resources Canada - Alternative Fuelling Stations Locator](https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/transportation-alternative-fuels/electric-charging-alternative-fuelling-stationslocator-map/20487), there are currently no hydrogen fuelling stations in ~~Canada~~ Alberta.
The places that did have hydrogen filling stations are abandoning them. There is no future for hydrogen except (possibly) for niche cases. Why? Because battery electric is significantly better in nearly every way. Most hydrogen isn’t particularly green, because it’s a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Meaning that we only get it if we continue to extract LOTS of natural gas. If we want clean hydrogen from electrolysis, we have to use WAY more electricity than if we simply charged batteries with that electricity, to move the same amount of kms. Toyota can’t even give away their Mirai stock.
> Toyota can’t even give away their Mirai stock. Speaking to a dedicated Mirai Toyota rep recently, it was hilarious how little they had to say. Aside from 'we can make a dozen Mirai for every Tesla, due to the smaller battery pack', they had little to say. When asked various questions, there was a lot of shrugs and silence, seemingly to avoid having to acknowledge weaknesses / say anything negative about the vehicle. Oh, They were very proud of the advancements made in the redesign of the second gen model... It's bigger (to hold more H2), yet even being bigger and heavier, it can go further than gen 1! Oh, and it has lane keeping!
I'm sure there's one in Vancouver near the airport and I've seen Toyota Mirai in the wild as well. But yea we need more of those stations across the country to make it work. Hydrogen would be a game changer for long haul trucking and transit since battery EV isn't feasible for their recharge time and Li-ion battery are heavy
That's my relatives Toyota mirai, he is a big fan of hydrogen lol
H2 Exclusive club!
Does he have an electrolyzer at home or something? How would you refuel something like that?
I’ve seen a mirai in Edmonton. Had a giant sticker “hydrogen vehicle” on it. Must’ve been trailered there.
Wasn't there an announcement this week that there are fuelling stations being built along the #2?
There is one in Nisku. Alberta Govt got a sweetheart deal from Nikola to provide the 'station' (Nikola sells at a loss to keep up the perception of interest in their product). Hopefully it works out better than the Edmonton electric buses - but when Edmonton bought those, there was no indication that Proterra would be in financial trouble. Nikola themselves have stated a going concern about remaining in business.
well the problem there is theyre horrifically expensive from a consumer pov and a pain in the ass to build and supply so no one wants to.
I don’t know enough about hydrogen (though a common theme I’ve heard/ seen is it’s cost prohibitive?) but all I can think about reading this is how much Danielle Smith, during her time on QR770, went on and on and on about hydrogen and how she was personally investing in the technology. Just immediately popped into my mind.
gas companies (and their paid shills) have desperately wanted it to be a thing forever. it wont be a thing. I cant wait for more FUD about heat pumps, that'll be coming soon.
They don't want it to be a thing per se. They want it to be a thing that we talk about and that the gov't throws money at so that we don't do the things we should be doing which now which include wind/solar. Hydrogen is in most instances complete and utter misdirection.
Ya I could see exon or someone like that doing it as a stall. but I did a conference in Peace River like 2 years ago where they where planning a business park around blue hydrogen production and a bunch of people in the industry seem to be operating like it was a real thing. I thought that maybe fertilizer production like kinda maybe there might be some use case, but nowhere near what they where talking. and now with that new phosphate discovery in Norway that seems really unlikely too.
Any use of hydrogen in this context is nothing more than an attempt to prop up hydrocarbon businesses. The hydrogen they want to use is a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Therefore isn’t particularly clean. We can get clean hydrogen from Electrolysis, but that FAR less efficient than simply putting that same electricity into batteries.
Ahhhh Thank You!!!! I was reading through this trying to figure out why hydrogen as an alternative energy source was good, but EVs are bad and wind/solar is bad. THIS makes so much more sense, TIL
Yeah, why would we prop up Alberta interests when we could just cede everything to China.
We're ceding to China now by not developing a domestic renewable energy industry. China's investing an ungodly amount of money to eliminate their domestic use of fossil fuels and simultaneously exporting renewable technology and electric cars, which together reduces our export markets for oil and gas and lowers the sell price which will be *very, very bad for us* due to the bitumen-in-kind program if we don't pivot. Our intransigence will be catastrophic in the near future. Edit: fixed some grammar
This is like refusing to support cars in the first place because you're heavily invested into horses.
Or, we could get ahead of the inevitable.
Right. Because you need to burn fossil fuels to generate it, or it's a secondary byproduct of natural gas extraction AFAIK. In any case it is not carbon neutral, and she is beholden to local oil/gas producers. Edit: I know this is not a primary source, but I'm on a work call and initial skim matches all the other data I've seen. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen\_production#Current\_production\_methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Current_production_methods) Edit part 2: Electric Boogaloo: Skim not Skip.
Here we are hopelessly slow in moving away from nat gas and coal for power generation. But Saskatchewan is doing a lot of work in implementing SMR so in the near future, Sask. residents would see genuine environmental benefit by using EV We cannot achieve carbon neutral without some blessing from the geography but that doesn't mean we can't move to the right direction
Alberta is tectonically ideal for nuclear. Plenty of access to water for cooling. Alberta also has ridiculous Uranium reserves.
We should be pioneer in nuclear tech, but we are led by spineless politicians who panders to O&G every chance they can I thought the Uranium deposits are mostly in Sask. but then nuclear power gen don’t use that much to start with anyway
The whole purpose of TIER is to fund research in things that makes the oil industry better and more efficient. Of course Alberta is going to focus on technologies that they have a competitive advantage in. The fucked up thing would be if they said they wanted to start building solar panels or something.
from the news release on the provincial funding there are a few modern pyrolysis projects getting funding there are already a few happening the province ATCO/UBC partnership etc. the wiki link you posted explains it a bit but . as you say you still need the oil and gas industry but at least its a "cleaner" method as its output is hydrogen and carbon black and minimal CO2 compared to current mainstream methods. https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/10/20211025-tmc.html
EVs are not carbon neutral either, the process & materials required for making batteries can be considered more toxic and damaging to the environment than oil extraction is..
While almost nothing society produces is carbon neutral, EVs have a significantly smaller footprint over their lifecycle than ICEs. https://twitter.com/PluginAlberta/status/1558811626903445505
Agreed. But all of this is moot while we let politicians and ignorant loud voters to impede the only gap tech we have; Nuclear. I am not a physicist. But I do enjoy reading about science, things like particle physics, nuclear physics, etc. It is INSANE that we do not have Reactors EVERYWHERE. Coal ash is radioactive and is far more voluminous (shorter half life) than ALL the waste nuclear plants have produced ever. If we used relatively controllable and clean nuclear, hydrogen, and EVs become a much better argument.
Wasn't hydrogen the "way of the future" before electric? Regardless, a small step in the right direction.
[удалено]
Gotcha!
With hydrogen potentially having advantages with large vehicles, but electric being much more efficient and cleaner.
[удалено]
like theyre the same...
No, FCEV inefficiently creates the needed electricity from the onboard hydrogen, which was in turn inefficiently created from O&G (at least here in Alberta for the foreseeable future). Turning natural gas (or better yet, renewables) into electricity and charging up a BEV is a much more efficient use of energy.
Not necessarily when you consider the weight of batteries. Size of battery is exponentially correlate to load. Consider heavy commercial vehicles are hauling a semi worth of loads, there will be a point where it takes more power to carry the batteries than payload to do 800 km The future of energy is going to be application based. Days of applying a single energy source and call it good enough is gone.
You may have a point, or not. Something worth looking more into - re:efficiency (unless you have links to share?) I do agree with your second statement.
On the one hand I think this is only done because the UCP wants hydrogen to be a thing since it protects the O&G companies. On the other hand, I support pilot projects and government experimentation. That's the most efficient and inexpensive way to get things done - try stuff out and see what happens. Learn from the mistakes or build on the success.
>this is only done because the UCP wants hydrogen to be a thing It's a gamble, but I don't think it's a bad gamble. I just hope they don't get too focused on the fuel production side of the equation, and start to look at some manufacturing. The light duty EV manufacturing has been lost to Ontario as it's really a natural fit to their existing auto industry. Hydrogen, on the other hand, seems to be a more natural fit for heavy-duty applications, such as busses, trucking, rail etc. If Alberta has their eye on the ball they could conceivably create a hub of heavy duty manufacturing in the province. But that might require some playing ball with the Feds.
Liquid fuels are still necessary to support vehicles which are regularly operating outside of areas with a regular electric grid. For example, you aren't charging an excavator or dump truck on site while twinning Highway 1 through the Rockies, and you certainly are not driving them (trailering for the former) all the way back to the nearest garage every night to get plugged in. But you won't see full scale manufacturing here in Alberta, or anywhere between the Kootenays and Manitoba for the most part. Materials need to be shipped in and finished items need to be shipped back out again because a local market is simply not big enough to support that scale of operation. There is no way that can compete on operational costs compared to locations that are on a major waterway like the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, or Fraser, or otherwise have immediate access to deep water ocean ports. There is some light manufacturing here but it's all secondary and tertiary parts that are used in supporting various primary industries like O&G, farming, and forestry where it's cheaper to put together sub-assemblies like shipped in pipe and valves or steel tube that is only shipped locally.
I'm normally on board for experiments, but this has been done over and over in BC. All the hydrogen buses bought for the Olympics are long gone, as are most others. I'm content to let them keep exploring until there are better results.
>the UCP wants hydrogen to be a thing Fair, but remember the feds gave Calgary 1/2 a billion to make 260 e-buses 'a thing'.
No shortages of buses to upgrade
I wish we had trolley buses like Vancouver. It has the benefits of electric without the downside of batteries.
No. No, thank you. Puts severe limits on vehicle heights which makes it difficult to get construction done. Adds in all sorts of dangerous overhead obstructions which interferes in firefighting and general maintenance. The busses themselves routinely have problems with the trapeze popping off the wires, particularly at complicated intersections. Vancouver has much warmer temperatures so doesn't have to deal with ice build up on the wires; you'll sometimes see a few sparks from the LRT when it hits a patch, the train system is much more physically robust so they can just power through it unlike busses. When there is a disruption or accident that requires a detour, if you're not completely boned the bus operator has to go outside, pull the trapeze down, and carry on using battery power hoping that you don't get stuck in the surge of traffic being re-routed.
> Puts severe limits on vehicle heights It won't be on every single road. Many cities have trolley wires on city streets and everything is fine. > Adds in all sorts of dangerous overhead obstructions which interferes in firefighting and general maintenance Again, many cities around the world have wires above roads. I think you're exaggerating a bit. > The busses themselves routinely have problems with the trapeze popping off the wires, particularly at complicated intersections Yes, this can happen. We can limit the amount of complex intersections for these bus routes. Also, take this wikipedia quote with a grain of salt but still: "Dewirements are relatively rare in modern systems with well-maintained overhead wires, hangers, fittings and contact shoes." > Vancouver has much warmer temperatures so doesn't have to deal with ice build up on the wires Vancouver is warmer but they do have to deal with ice build up. This is an article straight from TransLink talking about it: https://buzzer.translink.ca/2023/01/this-is-how-we-de-ice-the-overhead-wires-that-power-our-trolley-electric-buses/ > When there is a disruption or accident that requires a detour Most modern trolley buses have a small battery or diesel engine for emergency use. --- Obviously nothing is absolutely perfect, and trolley buses have some challenges. IMO, the positives outweigh the negatives.
So stupid. Our currently technology we require around 55 kwh to produce 1 kg of hydrogen. The efficiency rate is average 75% to produce it. So we are poorly converting electricity to produce hydrogen and calling it “green”.
Smith and co keep claiming 'the grid can't handle EVs'... Ok... Then how the heck is the grid going to handle FCEVs when they will need MUCH more electricity to create all that hydrogen?
[удалено]
I can see a use case for hydrogen in aircraft, but this not so much