Energy minister says hydrogen will 'not play a major role' in heating homes in the UK
Energy minister says hydrogen will 'not play a major role' in heating homes in the UK
Lord Callanan, speaking to The Climate Show with Tom Heap, says hydrogen could play a "small role in some localised areas" in heating UK homes.
Directly? Hell no. Piping hydrogen to homes is a nightmare.
As a method to bank excess energy (like a form of gas battery) in the form of H2 in off-peak generation hours, to use later during peak consumption? It absolutely will upturn the industry in a few years.
Got a windmill and a water source? You got Hydrogen production when you are at anything under 100% capacity. And unlike batteries, expansion only requires you add another tank, not more rare metals.
You can use the hydrogen in inexpensive, rare metal free, grid scale batteries too. Companies are bringing NASA's nickel-hydrogen to market.
Humorously, the batteries are themselves gas tanks, as it uses hydrogen gas as the anode.
But why hydrogen? I'm asking from ignorance here, but hydrogen is volatile, corrosive, and notoriously hard to store. What is the advantage over gravity/hydrological batteries, molten salt, compressed air etc?
Because it is not as difficult as you think it is. A lot of gas infrastructure can be converted to use hydrogen and we have the technology to handle hydrogen. That basicly means new seals and pumps for pipelines and some storage sites can be converted as well. With that you get a massive storage site. Even more importantly a lot of chemical processes use hydrogen and some steel production processes as well.
The problem is that hydrogen is going to be more expensive then electricity and electrolysis units are very expensive today. So if you can electrify something it propably is smarter to do that then to use hydrogen.
It’s just a sad ploy for the companies that own the pipes to pretend they can stay relevant for a few more years.
I think there's more to it than that. Much of the UK's existing housing stick will find it difficult to switch to heatpumps in the short-medium term to replace existing gas boilers, so as part of netzero, the UK government did pilots to see if piping hydrogen could be a viable alternative.
Turns out the answer is "no, not really".
Pretty much
Hydrogen is less efficient than electricity, and takes more energy to produce. Unless the process improves significantly, I can understand why it won't be the major source of heat for home use.
Guess it's back to electrify everything then.
Induction and heatpumps are the only answer.
For home heating and cooking, they're definitely a good route.
Ordinary coil stoves are fine to cook on too (I did for decades) but don't meet the need for upper-class signalling in the way that induction does.
Ordinary coil stoves are fine to cook on too
It's not their effectiveness that's in question, just their efficiency.
Obviously the conversion of electricity > heat is always the same (100%) but induction is better at getting more of that heat into the food rather than the surroundings.
I wonder if geothermal is something they can do there.
It's common in the Nordics and is usually the cheapest way to heat homes.
Last winter electricity was so expensive that district heating won.
But geothermal has otherwise been cheapest.
Most of the time when people suggest heat pumps they mean ground source ones. District cycle heat pumps would be the best solution from a cost and efficiency perspective, but require common action to install new infrastructure and so are harder to get than building level solutions.
Outside of that, unfortunately geothermal electricity tends to be very location and geology dependent. We absolutely should be taking full advantage of it where we can, but there are unfortunately limits on where is practical.
That's one way of being remember in History. Like the people who said the internet wouldn't ever be practical