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141 comments on HYDROGEN - grease to the elbow of Scottish power?
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... or if you are using natural gas as your h2 source, compare the resulting well-to-wheels effiencies of the h2 fuel cells to other petrolium fuels. IMO it does not do well on that basis:
http://odograph.com/?p=56
In WTW direct it consistantly beats ICE engines using the same fuel source. And ICE is the source we need to equal or beat to maintain business as usual, this is more than 'doing well'.
Of course I do not know what assumptions were made in the calculations (I have only looked at the table so far), add for example electric motors in the wheel hubs, and you reduce the mechanical transmission (gearbox et al) losses from the vehicle. Regenerative breaking, no consumption when stationary etc.
You are also powering it from non-fossel fuel sources.
Best Hopes,
Alan
This is particularly true of high density cities and some like London (the underground), it is the most practical means of moving large numbers of people.
This is a practical and implementable solution much more so than electric vehicles for all.
p.s.
I don't just comment on comments I think are bad or wrong.
Tube capacity is effectively 100% through much of the day. Unreliability doesn't help-- the system is ancient, and was badly maintained.
Moscow and Tokyo have great tube (subway) systems. London's is one delay from collapsing, some days.
As Global Warming takes on, London's problem will get worse:
- flooding - the '1000 year' Thames Barrier is already becoming the subject of plans for replacement
- rising water table
- overheating - London's tunnels aren't big enough to allow airconditioning (nowhere for the hot air to go). The system was actually designed by the Victorians to cool itself by its own motion pushing the hot air through the tunnels.
The next extension (CrossRail-- E to W under London) will cost £12bn minimum and will not be ready by the Olympics. And it won't actually create more ridership, just transfer it.The solution for London will be surface transport:
- bicycles - bicycles are carbon free. The climate is mild enough to cycle 100% of the time (but no one wants bicycles chained to their front fence 'bicycles will be removed' is a common threatening sign, and of course no one has shower facilities at work).
- buses - all of our overpasses and wires are built to take double deckers. So our mayor has introduced double length bendy buses, which are unreliable, clog traffic and are uncomfortable. But they have fewer seats, and so can carry more standing. Progress, isn't. You might say.
- light rail - more in the suburban areas, there is a tram in Wimbledon (underperforming) and one planned for the Uxbridge Road (suburban west)
One thing we have not seriously considered is El-Trains (elevated railways). There would be an almight howling from merchants, but I think the noise problems can be beaten, and they would be cheap. Cross Rail could be built as an El-Train for 1/6th the cost, and covering much more.In the case of London the Docklands Light Railway (elevated) is something of a joke, so that would condition popular resistance.
I wish NYC had not torn down the 2nd Avenue El.
The tube (underground/subway) can be improved with investment.
Flooding will have to be addressed, and not just for the underground.
I thought the water table was dropping in the South East ?
Overheating is not a unsurmountable problem.
* Bicycles - Not to everyones taste - I live in the UK (England) so I know the climate well. It is not well suited to bicycles all year round (wet, cold, snow, ice etc).
Also unsuitable for longer distances (even within London).
* Buses.
Last resort for many (Bendy or not).
* Light Rail.
I do support light rail, a prefered solution to buses.
(See http://www.lightrailnow.org).
The UK does need to invest in electrified public transport.
both for local and longer distance transport.
Surface transport is much cheaper to build, but must compete for space with other land/road users. Elevated rail addresses this to some extent. New York's underground (subway) was built by digging trenches and then restoring the road above it (rather than the deep underground of London).
The opportunities for sprawl are limited in the UK (by planning and green belt if nothing else).
90% of UK journeys are less than 5 miles, so well within cycling distance. In London cycling would actually be faster than most other means of transportation.
On bicycling and climate, it doesn't seem to bother the Danes or the Dutch! I grew up in Toronto, which is a genuinely inhospitable climate to cycling (too hot and humid or too cold): there aren't 10 days in London which are as bad, in an entire year. It's all a matter of your reference point. Given congestion, there really aren't ways of getting another million of us (projected population rise to 2030 I believe) around London.
(I should add, for safety concerns, that I never cycle in London)
Buses. You have captured the 'middle class British' view perfectly. Whether Maggie T really said 'anyone over 24 who takes a bus is a loser' or not, I don't know, but the sentiment caught the zeitgeist.
but our dear Mayor has engineered a '4% modal shift' from cars to buses, via the congestion charge. I don't know if you live in Central London, but I do. Buses have become a preferred method of transportation (pace the bendy bus, which drives me nuts), even for middle class professionals. Particularly given what has happened to the Tube (tube journeys have doubled since the late 80s-- arguably a victim of its own success).
There has never been a 'to bus' modal shift recorded in history. Yet London has managed it.
I expect, in time, that will percolate around the country. But congestion will have to get much worse, and local councils much tougher. Not everyone has its own home-grown anarchist-trotskyist demagogue.
Light Rail the Treasury has put the brakes on, because they don't see the cost-benefit working out. Manchester nearly lost its extension (I think they clawed it back politically).
For sure we should rebuild the Camden Town to Elephant and castle tram line (the one that ran down where the tunnel is at Holborn-Kingsway). But it's not even on the strategic plan, AFAIK. Uxbridge Road is the next one.
Water level: before the current drought, the concern in London was that the water level was rising due to less industrial offtake (industry in London almost gone). The Tube has had recurrent flooding problems. (my father built some of the original flood doors on the Northern Line-- the plan was to shut them in case of a nuclear war, you can see the grooves in the floor where they would swing. I think of them fondly every time I walk by them-- son and father connected by 55 years).
If sea levels rise, and we get more flash flooding, then London's underground system is quite vulnerable.
My understanding is New York could use 'cut and cover' subway construction because the roads were wider, and the ground better. Most North American subways were built with 'cut and cover' it costs something like a 10th of tunneling.
One of the reasons the Picaddilly Line wobbles the way it does is that apparently they couldn't buy the foundation rights from the freeholders, they had to literally dodge some buildings in South Ken and Knightsbridge.
On Sprawl, the Deputy Prime Minister is laying plans for 250,000 new homes in the South East-- Thames Gateway, also Milton Keynes, Northampton and a few other places. sprawl is very real, and very British. Agree its less than an American city.
What machinery is needed inside the stations besides cooling baffels and pipes? It should be bossible to drill lined holes and insert pipes for transfer of the chilled district cooling water to a convienient location for the chilling machinery.
Btw I am quite happy today regarding local post peak oil investments in Sweden. Our new liberal/right wing government presented its first budget today and added 20% on the railway infrastructure maintainance and investment budget.
You could put chillers on the surface (but not in the central London stations) but
the tunnels are open to the air (every Tube line has open air sections)
so the motion of the trains would just suck the hot air back in.
It's like trying to air condition a building with all the windows and doors open.
I found out about the contest after it was closed.
My proposal:
- Run all makeup air for the stations through dehumidifers that also cooled. This lowers humidity and lowers the temperature a bit. Comfort zones increase (wider band) as humidity drops.
- On cold winter nights (say after midnight weekdays) blow quantities of outside are through the tunnels for several hours. This will remove some of the acculmulated heat from the rocks that a century of heat (people + electricity) has added. It may be near freezing in the Tube for those few riders late at night and aftereffects for early morning riders.
- Go for lower energy for lighting. MAXIMUM efficiency. Lower light levels where safe. Start pumping less heat into the Tube.
Best Hopes,Alan
This BBC story covers using the ground water pumped out, to cool the air in the tunnels.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5058362.stm
http://www.cibse.org/pdfs/Cooling.pdf
Re: modal shift to buses, didn't York achive this first with their park and ride scheme, of course having a medieval city centre and city wall (not to mention the river) limits your options.
No congestion charge, just park and ride schemes and not moterised access to the city centre.
Cycling - It is often the 10% that are more than five miles (like the commute to work) which are non-discresionary.
Isn't the density of the sprawl sufficent to justify light rail or other public transport, (it is not low density sprawl) of course, adding public transport at the planning stage would have been ideal. But that goes for other amenities too.
I have several differences with current government transport policy, their views on light rail and road charging are just two.
Banning cars in Central London just wasn't going to work. They have restricted them to an extraordinary extent as it is, and they are only about 20% of peak traffic.
The congestion charge was the stroke of genius. The national congestion charge will come, but only when the traffic problem gets almost insuperable. Traffic grows roughly in line with GDP, so give it 20 years or so and severe traffic congestion will be something like 25% of UK road space, 50% of the time.
The problem with air con on the Tube is you can't put it on the cars, (the tunnels are too small).
Maybe you can air con the stations but most of that would be lost down the tunnels (which are not air tight).
Cycling will be the way forward in London, and other places. Because cycling has no CO2 impact, and cycling has nearly no congestion impact.
It's the only feasible way to expand the capacity of the system. Other than buses, but buses without their own right of ways don't cause switching.
To make a subway work financially, on Toronto metrics, you need 20,000 people per square mile. A British suburb is less than 5,000 people per square mile-- light rail you would need . 10,000.
What the government is saying is that it will not fund the ongoing operating losses of light rail systems. That is why there has been a halt on constructing new ones. Note the Wimbledon system in south London has disappointed against traffic projections.
You can do it economically with buses, but as you say people don't like taking buses, and won't if they have an alternative. Milton Keynes being the case in point-- if you don't have a car, you are really cut off in MK.
Brits are not North Americans-- the idea of living in tall apartment blocks in the city centre does not appeal. I know a lot have been built more recently, but even if downtown Manchester has a population of 15,000 now, from virtually zero 15 years ago, this is still a small fraction of the population of metropolitan Manchester.
and I suspect most people are buying those flats to get a 'foot on the ladder', not to live in them forever.
You are not trying to air condition the underground, but to dump excess heat, here ground water at 12C seemd ideal, as does just using convection to dump heat to the atmosphere by drilling vertical shafts (where practical) and letting convection solve the problem. You can always heat the carrages in the event of the underground becoming too cold.
I am still skeptical that cycling will ever become the dominant form of transport, but when practical facilities should be improved for cycleists, and they could be allowed in public transport zones.
You metrics assume certain factors, if we modify those factors (like restricting access via private car), or just raising the cost of motoring and lowering the cost of public transport, we can influence the metrics that justify public transport. But dense high traffic routes are the obvious targets for high quality frequent public transport (and that does not mean Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in my view).
The densities choosen for new developments are quite high (I don't have the figures).
The first step may be to expand existing rail routes etc and increase capacity and frequency on the railways, examine the underperformance of some light rail schemes light rail and further disincentivise private car use in urban centres through restrictions rather than congestion charges.
One way or another we need to make public transport cheap and convienent, and Rail/Light Rail offers the best opportunity for switching.
Many new towns appear to lack any public transport infrastructure. I am thinking of the one just outside Edinburgh, and Cumbernauld (both on M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow). They are souless.
Look at the Leeds Supertram, they rejected it (in favour of suggesting a BRT scheme), on the grounds that costs had doubled. But that was costs not adjusted for inflation.
Needless to say 12 years of inflation explained the increased costs, and the enabling legislation expired.
Ground temperature is almost constant, year round.
What is not constant is the heat generated by the machinery, people and the heat taken in from the outside air. Every Tube line has open air bits.
We would have to drill new tunnels, which is virtually a physical impossibility.
Tube air temperatures are, broadly, the sum of outside temps + electrical use + body heat.
The concept is to cool the rock around the Tube for, say, 1000 hours/year each year and, at a minimum, stop the increasing temperatures and hopefully reverse the process slightly.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Lowering the lighting levels any further would be entirely unsafe.
The best white LED's available commercialy struggle to get 40 lumens/watt. Lumiled's best is 120 lumens at 3.7W
Fluorescents get over 90 lumens/watt. Standard T5 triphosphor fluorescents from Osram get 2600 lumens at 28W
Best Hopes,
Alan
Alan
Osram SOX-E 91WBY32D RWL1 gives 17000 lumens for 90W in, that's 189 lumens/watt
I thought low pressure sodium was in the 150 lumens/watt range (>100 lumens/watt does not set an upper bound). Perhaps technology has improved. Good if so :-)
Alan
Since maintenance is an issue in London, I do not expect that they are any better.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Frustratingly, even in the rebuilt stations, they are not, AFAIK, thinking energy conservation.
1/2-1/3rd of lighting power consumption, I presume you mean. The big draws are still electric traction, elevators and air circulation?
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.19183/article_detail.asp
(read what the latter has to say about New Orleans, 2/3rds way down)
The point of the above is that people like sprawl, want sprawl, migrate to sprawl. Hong Kong and New York are the exceptions, not the rules. In Europe the boundaries of the City Walls created the core city (think Vienna) and the public transport systems were banged in before cars were widely available (we had 30 more low-car years than the Americans). Those factors haven't prevailed except in a few American cities.
What might happen is, if energy prices were far higher, that sprawl would be curtailed. But I thought that after the 70s energy crisis, and it hasn't happened-- more the opposite in fact.
We could pause to mention the CNG/LNG ICs are 12.7% and 12.9%, or the CNG/LNG fuel cells at 15.1% and 15.4%.
To me, that's a lot of effort to get very nearly the same results.
In fact, if we are starting with fossil fuels, that table shows the IC hybrids as the final, ultimate winners in w2w efficiency.
The king is the diesel hybrid IC at 18.6%
To achive parity with fossel fuels, is better than alternatives, with the exception of electricly powered public transport, which is much better, but is not a car !
These are complex calculations with many assumptions and value judgements, in the process, which have huge impacts on the outcome.
A superficial analysis would rate electric vehicles with lead acid batteries (80% efficient), as a very efficent solution, but that does not take account of the weight of the batteries. (p.s. Lead Acid batteries have been improved).
Look at this article for a confused solution (smae figures ?):
http://www.memagazine.org/supparch/mepower03/gauging/gauging.html
Steam reformed natural gas is No 2 with 27%.
Electrolysis is rated at 13%
But where are the pumping and storage options for the centeralised production of hydrogen. These costs are attributed to Electrolysis that occurs on site, where
losses are due to electricity transmission (10%), not
pumping of gas.
This is how different analysis results in wildly different results, and factors not considered, or applied to one solution and not the other can impact on the delivered solutions.
if diesel hybrids are the way to stretch those fossil fuels into the most efficient fossil fuel transport, so be it.
what comes after fossil fuel can be judged on its own merits.
(but i don't like the assumtion that some make in ethanol and hydrogen that we should "prime the technology pump" by wasting resoruces now, on the assumption of better tech later.)
Biofuels fail in my view to make the cut.
Research should be supported.
I would prefer to see other resources put into public transport (especially rail/light rail - electrified) as a proven solution and to provide an infrastruture for those who are priced out of the private car.
I see public transport as a much better solution than pump priming technologies (Like you I dislike pump priming).