Re: Hydrogen newsgroup general note

Dan Bloomquist wrote: 


Ed Earl Ross wrote:


Current generating capacity is used for home and industry--not much is used for transportation. A typical home uses under 5 kilowatts (5kw), and a tight home with high efficiency appliances may use only 1kw.

One horsepower is about 750 watts. A 100 hp auto is equivalent to 75kw--15 to 75 times as much power as your house uses. To make sufficient H2 for transportation, would require 15 to 75 times as much electricity generation as now produced for homes.


This doesn't compute. Take Don W.s typical use. He was getting 2 miles to the kwh. So a 60 mile commute would run 30kwh. An eight hour charge runs 4kwh. Night time demand leaves plenty of room for millions of vehicles in California.

Lowest cost electricity is produced by coal or nuclear power plants.


In France, yes to nuclear. The way we do it I'd wonder if nuclear is cheaper than methane even at $10/Mbtu. 

OK, here is another way to look at it.

DOE says transportation in the US consumes 27.79 quads per year. Moreover, net electricity generation is 13.49 quads per year.

If all transportation runs on electricity, then we need to add about 2x as much generating capacity--less a percentage for overnight charging. In other words, for every existing power plant, we need nearly two more.

Homes use about 1/3 of generated electricity. Thus, we need about 6x as much electricity as used for homes.

--
Humbly--Ed

"If the man doesn't believe as we do,
we say he is a crank, and that settles it.
I mean, it does nowadays, because now we
can't burn him."  (Mark Twain)
.

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