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In response to Rep. Larry Satcowitz’s 28 January VT Digger opinion piece as it applies to the implications for Vermont’s future energy policy… Larry, your piece is important, and it’s useful, but you stop short of taking us where we need to go with Vermont’s future energy policy. Following are a few of the issues left untouched, which I believe need to be addressed.
First, in Vermont, how is all of our electricity produced? If we look back upstream will we find our electricity continuing to be tainted by fossil fuels to a significant degree?
Next, the transportation sector. It’s a huge energy consumer. EV’s, wow! Recently our daughter flew home for a holiday visit. She landed in Boston and rented an EV which she drove to northern Vermont. Two [2], one [1} hour long stops to recharge! If she’d been driving a hydrogen fuel cell, Toyota Mirai, one five minute fueling in Boston would have taken her to Northern VT with sufficient fuel left over to drive around home a bit and then drive back to Boston.
A major issue in all of our electricity-based energy sectors is temporary storage to address the vagaries of constantly changing system demand. Batteries will never achieve a practical SAFE energy storage level for automotive use within the period in which GWSA2020 clean energy objectives are supposed to be attained. EV’s are a waste of time and money and responsible clean energy leadership at all levels of government should immediately start the move to hydrogen energy cars and trucks.
Electricity from rooftop solar is a realistic solution to clean energy heating for homes as well as for commercial and industrial facilities. But we must make an important leap to storing, for later use during periods of high demand, every photon of energy that strikes the rooftop solar. How do we do that? For sure, not with batteries.
All solar electric energy not immediately drawn into the distribution system, by demand from home or commercial or industrial facilities, must be fed, via net metering, into centrally located storage complexes—perhaps a dozen, more or less, located adjacent to existing electric power distribution switchyards. The storage complexes would consist—principally but not exclusively—of large heavy duty electrolyzers used to break down ordinary water and capture the hydrogen. The hydrogen would be converted, via a Linde type of phase change process from gas to liquid and stored, SAFELY, in large tanks.
Also, in the storage complexes adjacent to the electric power distribution switchyards, would be heavy duty fuel cell assemblies controlled by applicable electric switchgear and distribution system electronic sensors which would commence feeding re-gasified hydrogen to the fuel cells in response to upswings in power demands in the electric distribution system. Note that fuel cell energy produces no waste product, save pure water.
All of the physical components necessary to assemble the systems, I’ve described above, exist today and can be ordered and purchased in the appropriate sizes from American manufacturers. Professional engineers with experience in the several engineering disciplines, applicable to the systems I’ve described, can be engaged to design the systems and prepare contract documents [construction drawings, construction specifications, technical provisions] to be put out to bid. Contractors will be excited to bid on the contract documents and to build out, test. evaluate, debug and thereafter bring the systems into full time, online operation, one at a time, all around the state.
Costs will be controlled by a number of factors. First, not all of the energy storage complexes will be built at the same time. The process will likely extend over three decades allowing for leveling out of the costs. Competitive bidding will help control costs. A planned excess of stored hydrogen can be sold into the retail market to savvy Vermonters who choose the clean option of a hydrogen fuel cell auto or truck. Currently, the U.S. Department of Energy has funding available to assist States with moving out of fossil fuels into hydrogen.
Any Vermont citizen who knows a particularly perceptive, aware and open-minded Vermont legislator, must take the time and effort to be a one person, private citizen lobbyist and try to get that legislator onto the hydrogen band wagon. It won’t happen if we don’t make it happen, through our individual citizen initiatives. – Greg Pierce PE (CE) retired, St. Albans
Where is the call for tolerance and diversity? – At Wallingford Elementary School, we were taught the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would wish to be treated. This principle applies to everyone you meet, not just the majority.
We Americans fancy ourselves as tolerant, diverse and accepting of others’ views. We go to great lengths in many areas of our society to protect minorities. That is, until it comes to politics, where we do a 180 and become narrow-minded and unaccepting of minority viewpoints, adopting a might-makes-right attitude.
For example, with only 32% of votes going to Trump/Vance and a whopping 62.2% to Harris/Walz, Vermont rejected Donald Trump for president more than any other state (though the District of Columbia had an even larger anti-Trump majority) in the last election.
But did Vermont get what it wanted? No. As a small state with a tiny minority of the U.S. population, the preferences of the national majority will dictate our leaders. People from Texas and Pennsylvania will have their choice ruling over Vermonters, who are penalized for being part of a smaller voting bloc. Unfortunately, it gets even worse. Had the majority in Vermont gotten their way and Harris won, the oppressed now would be the minority within our state who desired Trump.
When will we realize the hypocrisy in claiming to be tolerant and allow diversity, while stifling that very diversity and monopolizing all power behind the most well-funded and backed political parties at the national level, who rule everyone from their position at the top of our hierarchical system?
Why must we perpetuate a political system that divides us, fosters anger and hatred, escalates conflict, and has led to massive oppression and persecution of minorities. – Jeb Smith, Rupert
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Categories: Opinion
I have never been confident that our scientists, engineers and auto industry experts have fully vetted the pros and cons of battery cars vs hydrogen direct combustion or fuel cell cars. NASA figured out back in the early 1960s that batteries just wont cut it in a spacecraft in terms of energy density for anything but a day or two. All the Apollo flights used hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells to generate electricity for the multi-day adventures. Obviously some auto makers like Tesla have done well with battery technology, but the current state of the art using lithium presents fire hazards as well as charge times that are relatively long compared to filling a tank with liquid petroleum or liquid hydrogen. The combustion of hydrogen either in a conventional piston engine or in a fuel cell to generate electricity uses oxygen from the atmosphere, making it a lot more convenient than it was for NASA where the oxygen also had to be carried on board. The factors of energy density, refueling time, weight requirements, safety and cost all have to be considered, and I’m not sure we have done that.
Chris Keyser, might you weigh in on this conversation. Does your energy background include familiarity with liquid hydrogen? Who else can talk intelligently about this? For most Vermonters this is new territory and we’d like to be more informed. Thank you Greg Pierce for bringing it to our attention.
There are LOTS of potential technologies that, in theory, could be used to power vehicles – cars, buses, trucks, planes, tanks, whatever. But just because something is POSSIBLE doesn’t make it PRACTICAL. For example, solar. Solar is great, solar is great! It’s all you hear. But you know what? Many of those panels use rare earth metals, and the others use more common materials like silicon, cadmium, and selenium. But no matter what they use, there’s a cost to mine these materials, process them, and manufacture panels with them. Then, consider that solar panels start to degrade the minute you install them, resulting in a useable life of 10-15 years. Then what? How to we get rid of all of them? And what happens to the rare earth metals? Those have to be recovered somehow, at a cost of using more energy. They’re *rare*, after all. That means we have a limited supply.
Hydrogen doesn’t have all of those problems, but how is hydrogen produced? By running an electric current through water. An electric current! Again, the technology borrows from Peter to pay Paul. Maybe if that could be done in-car, where your car would carry water instead of gasoline, that might work. But what I understand is, as currently proposed, you’d have to refill at a “hydrogen pump”. Okay, fine. Other than that, it’s a good alternative, right? All I can say is, remember the Ford Pinto? With the gas tank explosions on rear impact? You want to end your days because of a hydrogen explosion that’s far more dangerous and deadly that any gasoline explosion? I don’t.
So what’s the answer? As I’ve said many times, zero-point energy – energy from the vacuum. A one cubic foot sized unit could power your car, your house, whatever you could imagine. For free, other than the initial cost. Forever. We have the technology already, and it’s been perfected. But no, we can’t hurt Big Oil, can we? You know what? If we had that attitude 100+ years ago, we’d all still be riding horses and using oil lamps for light.
But sure, keep barking up the hydrogen tree. Keep barking up the solar tree. Keep barking up the wind tree. The rich will get richer and you’ll become poorer, as that’s just the way it goes and will continue to go – until you open your minds. Think!