During the time I've been running this channel I've made quite a few videos looking at the
various aspects of hydrogen as a fuel source, from hydrogen fuel cells to aviation fuel,
hydrogen storage in ammonia, hydrogen for heating homes and even the suggestion of hydrogen for gas
cookers. Although even I might draw the line at that one. Cooking on gas is one thing - cooking on
hydrogen? Meh, not so much. Since the early part of 2020 though the print and online media have got
themselves into a bit of a kerfuffle about whether hydrogen can really contribute to a genuinely
sustainable future or whether it's just a massive ruse by the fossil fuel industry to allow them
to continue extracting methane gas. And that's because there are two main ways to make hydrogen.
You can either get it from water via electrolysis like I did in my own back garden in 2019, and like
industrial scale electrolyser plants are beginning to do in many parts of the world creating what's
known as green hydrogen, or you can bombard methane gas with high pressure steam to separate
the CH4 molecule out into its constituent parts creating what's known as grey hydrogen. Plus the
not insignificant by product of carbon dioxide. And then there's a variation called blue hydrogen
where some sort of CO2 capture is attempted. The overall process is called steam methane reforming
and right now at the start of 2021 about 95 percent of all the world's hydrogen is made
that way, all neatly controlled by the fossil fuel corporations. And just to put the icing on the
double-tiered sponge cake of irony, the process requires more energy input from the fossil fuels
than it gets out in the hydrogen at the end. You really couldn't make it up!
So the strong suggestion by many campaigners and journalists is that unless there's a shift towards
green hydrogen in the next few years that is so dramatic it borders on revolutionary, hydrogen
will just become another back door for methane gas producers to continue playing their trade.
But that revolution has already started in some parts of the world. Most notably in Australia and
now a new Australian start up company has launched a fridge sized green hydrogen home energy storage
system that could prove to be a serious competitor for the industry-leading Tesla Powerwall.
Hello and welcome to just have a think. I'm sure you've seen all the hype around hydrogen in the
press over recent months. Some commentators are going as far as to suggest it's the fossil fuel
industry's last big scam - its final last ditch attempt to remain commercially viable
in the 21st century now the concept of natural gas as a transition fuel is being rapidly outpaced by
increasingly inexpensive wind and solar coupled with grid scale battery energy storage.
And it's certainly fair to say that some policymakers around the world have shown an
alarming level of ignorance and naivety in their gushing enthusiasm for extracting hydrogen from
natural gas, having been seduced and convinced by the highly talented PR people at fossil fuel
HQ... "what assessment has my right honourable friend made of the potential opportunities
presented for the manufacture of blue hydrogen at Beckton, creating low-cost carbon jobs for
the East of England?" " Uh, I also know that the oil and gas authority is currently conducting an
in-depth feasibility study into blue hydrogen at the Beckton gas terminal and I very much welcome
this work". When it comes to the question of our sustainable energy future there are few countries
in the world where the debate rages more fiercely than Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison
said last year that "There is no credible energy transition plan for an economy like Australia in
particular that does not involve the greater use of gas as an important transition fuel."
A claim which was fairly comprehensively debunked in this article by Simon Holmes a Court, citing
studies by all these academic organizations, all of which conclude that the unexpectedly rapid rise
of wind and solar coupled with battery storage, plus the resurgence of pumped hydro, means that
Australia can in fact radically reduce gas and coal use in the coming years and still keep the
lights on with electricity at low prices. A big part of that green transition will be millions
of solar panels on the roofs of homes offices factories and public buildings, most of which will
be hooked up to some sort of energy storage system to ensure a power supply right around the clock.
That's where this new home hydrogen battery system comes in. The company that created
it is called Lavo, and they launched both the business and the products back in October 2020.
Hydrogen is very good at storing energy in fact it's got the highest energy density per kilogram
of any non-nuclear fuel, but its volume is enormous at normal temperature and pressure
so it generally has to be cryogenically cooled to minus 250 degrees Celsius, or highly pressurized
to get it into its denser liquid form. Both these processes require a lot of energy and
could be hazardous or even explosive if handled incorrectly. Not a great set of criteria for use
in a domestic setting. But Lavo's system differs from those two methods. Designed to be hooked up
to a conventional water main and a rooftop solar PV system the LAVO unit first runs the
water through a purifier and then uses the solar power to run an electrolyser to separate the water
into hydrogen and oxygen, just like the large grid scale electrolysers I mentioned earlier.
The oxygen is released back into the atmosphere but instead of freezing or pressurizing the
hydrogen the folks at LAVO have developed a system that can store it completely safely as a solid.
They achieve that little bit of magic by combining the hydrogen with a metal which
is capable of absorbing it into its structure, a bit like a sponge absorbs water. LAVO are keeping
the specific composition of that metal fairly close to their chest as part of their patented
system, but the resultant combination is a stable metal hydride. The pressure required to force the
hydrogen into the metal lattice is no more than the force applied by the electrolyser itself.
As soon as that pressure is removed the hydrogen starts leaking back out of the metal
and it can then be diverted into a fuel cell to produce electrical energy. The hydrogen hydride
is stored in four removable modules, each of which contains the equivalent of 5000 litres
of hydrogen gas and holds enough energy to run a small home for a full day. The overall capacity
of the system is 40 kilowatt hours and LAVO reckon it's good for 20 000 cycles, which compares very
favourably to something like the Tesla Powerwall, which is warranted for about 3 000 cycles.
The round-trip efficiency of the LAVO system, which is essentially the energy produced via solar
or wind versus the energy released out of the fuel cell, is about 50 percent. That is significantly
lower than the 95% conversion rate for lithium-ion batteries, and unsurprisingly in this very
early stage of commercial production the cost is comparatively high too at about 30 000 Australian
dollars compared to just over 13 000 for the Tesla Powerwall. But if you crunch the numbers, even
at 50% efficiency, you're potentially getting far more bang for your buck during the entire lifetime
of the LAVO system. Despite ScoMo's insistence on cosying up to the Australian coal industry,
there are increasingly favourable regulations at state and federal level in that country,
including the national hydrogen strategy, and companies like LAVO look to be quite well placed
to take advantage of the current environment to bring these sorts of technologies to market.
As well as installations in domestic homes, LAVO will be going after commercial units
and energy hungry centres like telecommunication towers. They also plan to disrupt the dominance
of off-grid backup diesel generators. The company reckons there's a potential AU$2 billion
market just in Australia and as much as AU$40 billion worldwide. Whether or not the LAVO system
is the right one for you will depend on your geographic location, your domestic energy use,
and whether you're on grid or off-grid. And your budget of course. In some cases lithium-ion
batteries may be a preferable option. And there are others too, like this redox flow battery
from Australian company Redflow. But the really encouraging thing from the consumer point of view
is that there is now some genuine competition in the residential energy storage market
that will inevitably drive innovation and efficiency in the design and manufacturing process
which ultimately translates into keener prices for you and me. And that will hopefully achieve
the ultimate aim of encouraging more and more people to dive into the green energy revolution.
If you've got views or direct experience of the new green hydrogen industry
then jump down to the comments section below and leave your thoughts there.
That's it for this week though. We're taking a week off for the Easter break now, so there'll be
no Just Have a Think video on Easter Sunday. But the fifth of the Just Have Another Think videos
will be published this Wednesday, and normal service will of course be resumed
on Sunday the 11th of April. Before I go I must just give a quick shout out to the folks
who've joined our Patreon page since last time with pledges of $10 or more a month. They are
Samuel Douglass, Alessandra Pizzo, Mark Durbin, Dion Macintyre, Larry Tomlin, Chris Lancaster,
Andrew Green, Damien Seery, Zachary Semke, Dave Malich, Henning Hollatz, Rick Rys,
Karl Callwood, Dennis Dennis, Josh de Roos, Karamjeet Pandher, Keith Dunn, and Ben Burmeister.
and of course a big thank you to everyone else who's joined since last time too. You can get
involved in all that and get the opportunity to exchange ideas and information plus watch
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do all that, you just need to click down there or on that icon there. As always, thanks very much
for watching, have a great couple of weeks and remember to just have a think. See you next time.