Comments on: Vertiv Hydrogen Fuel Cell Quick Look

By: Elijah

Elijah — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 13:38:58 +0000

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas. Both are released during hydrogen production – at least the vast vast, majority of greenhouse production today. The term ‘pollutant’ isn’t helpful here.

Hydrogen production wastes up to 50% of the electricity used. That is not helping grid reliability.

Sorry, your opinions don’t trump the facts.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 16:36:08 +0000

CO2 is not a pollutant. And electricity generation is also not very efficient. Of course it’s better to use electricity from the grid. But there are problems with that, especially during a time of worry about grid reliability as wind and solar are onboarded. And dramatically increasing the load on the grid likely makes it hard for these systems to hit renewable targets. It’s possible that these data center operators think they can produce their own electricity cheaper than getting it from the grid, which is astounding to me, and perhaps shows the current state of electricity generation. They aren’t doing this to feel cool about themselves.

So yeah, it seems to me these data center operators have a few options: 1) wait around for the grid to possibly catch up (not a good business strategy the way things look right now), 2) invest in their own expensive wind and solar power along with large batteries (not very environmentally friendly in the long run and very expensive), 3) build natural gas generators (public relations nightmare in the current climate and the government might put the kibosh on that if they haven’t already), 4) build small nuclear or hydrogen fuel cell generators.

By: Elijah

Elijah — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 10:14:16 +0000

Depending on how the Hydrogen is produced, it can be more polluting than burning coal.

Also, generating Hydrogen is not very efficient, about 50-70%. It’s better to just use electricity from the grid.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 15:07:22 +0000

From what I can see, the cases of hydrogen gas explosion have been from hydrogen storage and production facilities, not from pipelines. Hydrogen disperses very quickly because it’s a small molecule and doesn’t seem to cause large problems outside confined spaces. In that case centralized hydrogen production with distribution through pipeline might be the safest method to build out the use of the gas. In any case, of course its dangerous. So are methane, gasoline, lithium batteries, and even flour. I am skeptical it’s inherently more dangerous or less capable of pipeline transport than other fuel sources. Most likely there just needs to be experience dealing with it and proper safety standards put into place.

As far as hydrogen production, next generation nuclear reactors should produce it quite efficiently.

Any sort of full-scale energy transfer is going to take decades, unless you want to create a trillions-dollar boondoggle. The limited build-out of hydrogen infrastructure for niche purposes such as powering data centers is perhaps ideal for such a transition without creating a boondoggle. Not only can technologies and protocols be refined, but it can fail financially without failing spectacularly and triggering an economic depression. And have no doubt, the real risk of failed energy transition in terms of lost of life and livelihood is not from explosions but from economic fallout.

By: emerth

emerth — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 18:04:20 +0000

Fantastic article. Thanks, Patrick.

By: David

David — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:13:04 +0000

Biggest problem with hydrogen pipelines and supply is that because hydrogen is such a small molecule there’s always leakage which can turn into a big boom very quickly if not dispersed.

So if you can produce hydrogen locally when it makes economic sense it can work well as a temporary backup or even as a way to deal with peak load. But as a long term energy generation mechanism it’s not viable as the total system efficiency isn’t that high (typical 40%) and production and storage is quite complex. Other places are using natural gas with hydrogen mixes, which can solve some of the issues while still being considered “green”.