I do definitely think green hydrogen has a big future ahead of itself though. We still use an absolutely ridiculous about of H2 in industrial processes (especially fertilizers).
Europe could produce huge amounts of fertilizers in the summer in the future with all the excess solar and wind it has via this method.
It seems to me hydrogen skipped a step - focus on replacing hydrogen feedstocks in industrial processes directly with green hydrogen, instead of replacing stuff up the chain that can be done with batteries directly anyway.
Ie. in the evening whilst everyone has their ovens on, charging might only be 3 kW per bus, but then at 1am when everyone has gone to bed, it can be 30 kW per bus.
Using that approach, you can get far more capacity out of old infrastructure.
Unfortunately, some utility companies aren't amenable to that approach, and instead insist you pay to upgrade the infra, since to them it's a free upgrade.
Also, if it is a cold night and everyone leaves electric heating/heat pumps on, what happens then? Noone can get to work the next day?
Regardless most urban transformers are not going to have 15MW of overnight capacity spare even on a good day. The largest LV substations might be 30MVA in the UK at least - they won't just have half capacity suddenly free.
As an aside, we have so far really dropped the ball on level 1 electric vehicle chargers at offices. As solar power and EV numbers increase, it's pretty obvious that we want more cars charging during the day and fewer charging at night.
Our govt. really did a disservice to transition to EVs by slapping on a big tax to anyone even brushing against a charger at work: 120€/year
Not sure why you are being downvoted.
The absolutely largest peak is in the morning and then a smaller one in the afternoon.
So you might have a baseline like every 10 or 15 mins and then in rush hour it is every 3 or 5 mins.
humans have places to be. They shouldn't wait for transit. and they mostly won't.
City busses don’t need that much energy because as they don’t move quickly, the cargo is light, and regenerative breaking offsets stop and go.
Sure, for regular battery buses without trolley collectors, indeed some new transformers might be needed. But even here, I wonder if you could make it somewhat distributed, with some charging happening at the line terminus where the drivers also often have to take a break anyway.
Battery buses have a battery capacity of around 400kWh. Assuming they are stabled for 6 hours overnight, that's only a charging power of 66kW. Suddenly your depot needs a connection with a peak capacity of 3.3MW instead of the proposed 15MW.
This can get significantly better in practice. There's a peak transit demand during commute hours, but that means there are quite a few unused buses in the middle of the day. Those can charge at the depot to take advantage of cheap daytime solar. A lot of bus routes are timed, with a waiting time of 5 to 10 minutes at the turnaround point. Place an overhead charger here, and the charging demand can be distributed across the day. As a bonus, this also reduced the battery capacity needed - and the associated lower weight reduces total energy demand as well.
Sure, bus depots are going to need beefy connections, but that's hardly an insurmountable obstacle. The ongoing rapid rollout shows that it simply isn't a such a big issue in practice.
Firstly you have charging losses - and you're assuming that you can charge at the same rate consistently over the cycle of the charge.
Secondly, doing it like that massively reduces operational flexibility. If buses are all late back (bad traffic for example) you would want to charge more aggressively than the 60kW. You can't so you're going to have buses that are low on charge the next day.
Finally, it's all a bit moot. In most areas you do not have 3MW of spare capacity on the LV network to suddenly plug into. You're going to need a new HV connection or dramatic LV grid reinforcement, so you might as well put a decent connection in at that point. The cost is basically the same, most of the cost is in permits and civils.
Your idea to place charging points at turnaround points is also not as feasible as you make out. It's incredibly hard to do that (TfL massively struggles to get planning for a simple toilet block for drivers at turnaround points) and they are not designed in a way to have buses in a certain exact position to charge often. And even if you could if buses are late they cannot skip the turnaround like now as they need to charge. This will cause massive cascading delays down the route for the rest of the day.
Grid connections are the reason rollout is so slow, at least in the UK. There is relatively plentiful funding for it but most depots are now completely maxed out in power availability - any spare capacity has already been used and the LV DNO queue is 10+ years for local reinforcement.
Unless you burn the hydrogen, you aren't producing any emissions... unless you count water as an emission. Fuel cells don't produce any emissions.
Burning hydrogen though, does produce some emissions, however it's pretty minimal. I believe it's only NOx, and even then at far lower rates compared to gas vehicles. No CO2, CO, or any other stuff from gas or not-fully-burnt gas.
That said, I agree hydrogen has seemingly no place in something like buses. Frankly, the only places that I see hydrogen has any future is either going to be for planes and boats, or potentially for intermediate storage akin to batteries (i.e., create hydrogen with excess solar/wind power).
So you still need filters, this not for the exhaust, but for the intake.
ICE air filter would destroy them in no time.
in one way it is a downside since its more parts and complication than maybe a pure EV architecture, but the similarities to ICE arch means that its an attractive option to transition to for both the OEMs and a tiered supply base used to working on ICE vehicles. If you can get economies of scale going and bring cost down for fuel cell its a great replacement for many (not all) ICE archs.
They are preferred solutions for larger vehicles because of the weight of lithium ion batteries. also because theyre optimized for power density while electric architectures excel with energy capacity/storage. But if you can implement infrastructure at the locations where these larger Class A vehicles are (or busses), then you dont care about capacity for the known universe's lightest (resting mass) fuel as much since H2 refuel times are fast.
You are correct about boats though, it is also a good solution set there. Planes will only work if we can achieve air cooled hydrogen fuel cells and eliminate the expensive and heavy balance of plant (Hysata).
Googling a bit I found this article about the first series produced parcial trolley busses (eq. battery equiped) being delivered in 2018: https://www.bmhd.cz/aktuality/aktualita.php?1481
Since then it certainly expanded a lot & there are now regular lines that have the trolleybus go part of the line under its own power, like the recently introduced line to Soběšice: https://brnensky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/brno-mhd-prvni-linka...
Thanks to this you can go watch them stow/deploy their collectors at the Královo Pole nádraží stop at about any time during the day. :)
It was usually in some tricky spots - trolley wires crossing streetcar wire on Konečného náměstí (yeah, we have both :) ) or on the top of the rather steep slope of the Kotlářská street next to the Natural sciences faculty of the Masaryk university.
I guess the new trolley busses with batteries and poles thatr can be stowed automatically might be even better for this - no need to fix the poles immediately, but wait for a regular stop or even the line terminus & just use the battery.
Also once when touring one of the trolleybus depos (the small one in Husovice) the local maintenance chief mentioned that the one roundabout wired for trolley buses (yes, that exists) is a pain to maintain & maybe they could scrap it in the future, with the busses crossing it on batteries instead. :)
We also have both streetcars and trolleybuses, and some strange junctions like the one at 5th and Jackson: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4TuLXmRLY5yK6HGJ6
There are some nice blog posts from a Seattle bus driver that go over some of the nerdy details of our system: https://www.nathanvass.com/blog/i-dont-know-what-a-trolley-i... https://www.nathanvass.com/blog/i-dont-know-what-a-trolley-i...
Australia kind-of already had 'hydrogen' infrastructure and supply chains already, in LPG or 'autogas'. LPG (or dual petrol/LPG) used to be a popular option for small vehicle fuel in Australia in the 2000s though has slowly declined due to petrol/electric hybrids coming along.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-19/lpg-cars-disappearing...
That said, it's possible to convert diesel engines to burn a 90% hydrogen/10% diesel mix, which could dramatically alter those numbers: https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2024/08/converting-diesel-engin...
It shouldn't be too difficult to bring back 'autogas' infrastructure in Australia. And if we can, I don't see why others couldn't deploy it made sense to do so. Liquid/gas fuels make much more sense in very-low to moderate density areas with long distances between populated centres. Batteries make much more sense in high population density areas with relatively short trips.
Whilst I agree it's not as ideal as a true zero-emissions thing, it's certainly a stepping stone to greatly accelerate the decarbonisation of our fuels, by allowing many to convert internal combustion engines to use much cleaner fuels, without having to buy brand new vehicles.
Given that petrol and diesel these days are usually almost double the cost per litre of LPG in Australia, and that a lot of decently sized long range EVs are still very expensive in Australia, especially considering cost-of-living pressures and the distances many Aussies have to drive in rural and remote areas where EVs just aren't practical, I'm a little surprised LPG hasn't made a comeback.
Australia has since kicked off a project to construct a large green hydrogen generation plant in Western Australia, due to be producing by 2029 and fully operational by the end of 2031, so hydrogen could become a pretty big deal in by 2030.
https://research.csiro.au/hyresource/murchison-hydrogen-rene...
I’m currently in rural NW NSW, and it seems to me that BEVs would be ideal out here once they get a bit cheaper. Plenty of sunlight. Plenty of rooftop solar — every second house and farm shed has solar panels already. Powering farm vehicles from local solar instead of imported diesel seems logical and inevitable really.
With battery buses - you might need to slightly beef up the local transformer and installs some new wires and that's it.
Or even better, do what the city mass transit company does here in Brno, Czech Republic - get trolley busses with batteries, that charge from the overhead wires while on the way, so they can then continue to serve additional destinations past the terminus of road electrification.
It is also super handy for any road work, they just automatically stow their collectors and then once again under wires, deploy them. There is usually a small trough around the wires at this spot, guiding the 2 collectors to the 2 wires. As a result, the driver does not have to leave the vehicles when connecting or disconnecting from wired power.
And it looks super cool! :)