Despite impressive advances, bus battery technology is still not optimal – poor range, and reduced energy storage in cold weather. So to avoid putting all their clean energy buses in one basket, TfL has consistently been evaluating hydrogen fuel cell buses.
Long before the first official determination of pollution as the cause of death of a 9 year old London girl shone the spotlight on the impact of pollution on respiratory systems, London had been at the vanguard of advancing clean transport technologies.
Additionally, a recent series of troubling London air pollution reports, such as the levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and other toxic volatile organic chemicals (VOC), are shedding new light on the extent of inhaled toxins and carcinogens on the Capital’s streets. Diesel bus exhaust results in buildup of NOx (NO + NO2) inside bus terminals.
The sudden reduction of cars, trucks, and buses in March 2020 due to the onset of the pandemic just as quickly resulted in clear skies over major cities worldwide. Unfortunately, traffic quickly returned, and the startling view of crystal clear air that shouldn’t be easily forgotten, has been forgotten. We note the recent realisation of the impact of brake and tyre particulates on air quality and breathing, but address only zero emission buses in this article.
TFL‘s Zero emission buses
To tackle the capital’s air quality crisis believed to be largely caused by diesel engines, recent Mayors and TfL had initiated a number of new clean air transport initiatives. We recently covered battery buses and ULEZ’s in On The Buses: Fares, Fumes and Finances, and now look at the role that hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) buses are starting to play.
We had first looked at London’s hydrogen buses in 2014 in Asphalt and Battery: The future of the London Bus (Part 2):
When you are responsible for a fleet of over eight thousand diesel buses it is only right and proper that you investigate alternative options and this TfL has done. At one stage hydrogen looked very promising. In the past few years TfL have experimented off and on with hydrogen buses on route RV1 but, whilst the latest buses are still in service, there does not seem to have been any effort made to extend them beyond this one route. This is probably because they are very expensive indeed. It is also the case that, although hydrogen can be seen as a solution for getting rid of tailpipe emission at the point of use, it does not solve any energy issues because more energy in the form of electricity is required to extract the hydrogen from water than can be obtained from burning it as a fuel (and creating water). As such, hydrogen is merely an alternative to the battery.
There are of course various other gases apart from hydrogen that can be burned. The problem with these are that they are still hydrocarbons but in gaseous rather than liquid form. The main attraction of these fuels for taxis and other vehicles is that they don’t attract fuel duty – something that bus operators don’t pay anyway.
Transport in London has had a long history of innovation, from the pioneering Metropolitan Line in 1863, the first electrically powered Underground line in 1890, to the world’s first automated underground line in 1968. Buses have not been exempt from technological advancement, with London at the forefront of bus technologies and designs such as the original Routemaster.
London’s first hydrogen bus route – RV1
TfL’s first foray into hydrogen power started on Riverside bus route RV1 in 2002. The route connected Central London with South Bank attractions, including the Royal Festival Hall, National Theatre, London Eye, and Tate Modern, and operated between Covent Garden via Tower Gateway station, Waterloo, London Bridge station and Tower Bridge, serving many streets that previously had not been served by buses. The short 6 mile route length, dense central London routing and high visibility to tourists meant that RV1 was an ideal route to trial and fly the environmentally friendly bus flag – the only emissions of hydrogen vehicles being oxygen and water.
The hydrogen buses serving on this route were initially three hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) powered Mercedes-Benz Citaros operated between 2004 and 2010. Some of these buses were also trialled on route 25 in 2009. This small fleet allowed TfL to compare their efficiency directly against diesel powered Citaros. However, due to a lack of hydrogen capacity in those buses, their limited range only allowed operation in the mornings and early afternoon. Whilst the RV route prefix was part of Riverside branding, there was cynical speculation that it also meant Research Vehicle.
The Citaros were removed from RV1 service in 2010, replaced by eight new Wrightbus Pulsar 2 hydrogen-powered VDL SB200 bodied single-decker buses purchased by First London, which were operated on the route until 2013. Two Van Hool single decker hydrogen fuel cell A330FCs replaced the Alexander Dennis Enviro 200 Darts on route RV1 in January 2018, allowing a full hydrogen fleet to operate for the first time.
Some of the RV1 hydrogen buses have apparently had poor ride quality and high interior noise levels, equivalent to a diesel bus. As a comparison, battery electric buses are considered far superior in these respects.
Massive cutback in RV1 bus frequency after London Bridge rebuild
Part of route RV1’s continued raison d’être was the Thameslink Programme London Bridge rebuild. The biggest capacity gap it was helping to fill started to fall off post May 2016 (when the bus route ridership halved), then in August 2017 with the station works phasing changes. With the Blackfriars Southern entrance opening, combined with renewed peak Thameslink service from London Bridge, the 2019 RV1 ridership dropped to about 10% of what it once was.
It was thus no surprise that route RV1 was discontinued on 15 June 2019. Diesel bus route 343 was then extended from Aldgate to Tower Gateway to replace the service between London Bridge and Tower Gateway. The Wrightbus hydrogen single deckers were moved to route 444 and the Van Hools to storage.
To develop a dedicated hydrogen source, TfL are coordinating with Project Cavendish, a collaborative feasibility project between Southern Gas Networks (SGN), National Grid, and Cadent. This project is evaluating the potential of using the Isle of Grain’s existing infrastructure to supply hydrogen to London & the South East, including hydrogen generation by steam methane reforming (SMR), storage, and transport. Sixty kilometres east of London, the Isle of Grain hosts the National Grid’s Grain liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal, as well as a number of gas shipping terminals, gas blending facilities, and considerable natural gas storage.
SMR is the traditional hydrogen generation technology, also called ‘gray hydrogen’ for its dirty fossil fuel production method, which releases carbon into the atmosphere during processing. However, this process can be rectified with CO₂ capture, to a low-carbon standard to make ‘blue hydrogen’. This is the hydrogen that TfL is hoping to use.
Next Generation hydrogen buses
In 2018 London once again took a technological jump on transport innovation – TfL commissioned two hydrogen fuel cell double deckers – a world first. One is a conversion of a former hybrid bus demonstration vehicle, and the second is a brand new double decker Streetdeck FCEV (fuel cell electric vehicle), again from Wrightbus, powered by Ballard hydrogen fuel cells. They are due to be trialled by Tower Transit from Lea Interchange garage.
The Mayor’s imperative
Mayor Sadiq Khan has made tackling the public health issues caused by air pollution one of his major initiatives. Toxic air is a threat to all Londoners’ health, especially children, the elderly, and those with lung and heart problems. Scientific studies are starting to show that high values of air pollutants correlate with more severe COVID symptoms.
Under his initiative, the 2019 Mayoral Plan set the goal of 2,000 zero-emission London buses by 2025, and a full zero-emission bus fleet by 2037 at the latest. When TfL introduced the ten Low Emission Bus Zones and the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in April 2019, harmful nitrous oxides (NOx) emissions were reduced by 90% on some of the capital’s busiest roads in only a few months.
TfL then announced in May 2019 that it will introduce 20 of the new Wrightbus hydrogen buses into service in 2020 on London bus routes 245, 7 and N7. All of the buses in the ULEZ, and 75% of the entire bus fleet, already meet these standards. The plan was to have the entire TfL bus fleet meet the standards by October 2020, making the entire city a Low Emission Bus Zone. Unfortunately, one of responses to the coronavirus pandemic was to temporarily remove the ULEZ restrictions.
TfL’s currently operates over 200 zero emission buses, Europe’s largest electric fleet, mostly battery powered. However, hydrogen buses can store more energy on board than equivalent battery buses, meaning they can be deployed on longer routes. Hydrogen buses now only need be refuelled for five minutes once a day, making them much quicker to refuel than to recharge battery buses.
In June 2020 Ryse, a hydrogen generation company, and Wrightbus, the manufacturer of London’s New Routemasters, won the 10-year contract to deliver these buses in 2020. Once the new Wrightbus hydrogen bus squadron is in service, London will have the largest zero-emission bus fleet in Europe. We know what you’re thinking – so hold that thought.
Billionaire invests in hydrogen
Ryse Hydrogen is owned by Jo Bamford, the son of billionaire and JCB construction firm owner Lord Bamford. The alternative fuel company plans to power thousands of hydrogen buses, as other British cities are also trialling hydrogen buses – such as Liverpool, which is placing ADL fuel cell double decker buses into operation. In 2016 a hydrogen bus cost more than £1m, but in 2019 it is only £350,000. A comparable diesel version costs roughly £230,000. Bamford fils believes that this drop in hydrogen bus prices now make hydrogen generation a growth market. As seeming confirmation of this, Ryse was recently awarded a contract to provide hydrogen powered buses to Aberdeen under similar European Union funding.
Roadblock to hydrogen – it’s financial not technical
Unfortunately, there was a sudden major roadblock to TfL’s plans – Wrightbus slid into insolvency in late September 2019. A saviour was feverishly sought for one of Britain’s few remaining bus manufacturers, as we covered here.
The billionaire doubles down his bet
But at the last minute, it was Jo Bamford who took over Wrightbus, via Ryse Hydrogen on 11 October 2019. Now under the new Bamford Bus Company, the new owner has restarted production.
Other funding sources
Trialling such new transport technology is not cheap. TfL is investing £12m in the 20 new Wrightbus hydrogen buses and fuelling infrastructure. More than £6 million of the funding for this is being provided by the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) of the European Commission, and £1m from the UK Office of Low Emission Vehicles. Note this means that the net capital cost to TfL is £5m for these 20 new buses – plus some extra operational costs – which prices the new buses at a comparable level to conventional diesel buses, for these initial examples. What a production line bus might cost TfL or lessors, could be a different matter.
JIVE talking
TfL hopes to acquire up to 150 hydrogen powered vehicles. Interestingly, TfL is leading the procurement on behalf of a number of UK transport authorities and bus companies, rather than just for London. The specific aim of the procurement is to generate interest from a range of potential suppliers so as to offer a choice of technological solutions and innovation and, obviously, to create price competition for the supply of such buses. It is also worth noting that the latest Green Bus funding awarded by the government provided a contribution for the supply of 42 hydrogen vehicles – with London and Birmingham named as recipients of this funding. TfL is also a lead partner in the Joint Initiative for hydrogen Vehicles across Europe (JIVE) project, to encourage the implementation of this clean technology in other UK and European cities. JIVE aims to bring down the unit vehicle cost by volume buying with other authorities.
H2Bus Consortium
Concurrently, a new group of companies called the H2Bus Consortium also formed and is working to deploy 1,000 zero-emission fuel cell electric buses (FCEBs) and supporting infrastructure in European cities, including London, by 2023. The high upfront cost of the buses and refuelling infrastructure is the main barrier to the adoption of fuel cell buses. So H2Bus has the goal of providing a single-decker hydrogen bus price below €375,000 and bus servicing of €0.30 per kilometer. This would make the scheme cost competitive with diesel and hybrid buses. Consortium members are Ballard Power Systems, which designs and manufactures hydrogen fuel cells, Everfuel, Wrightbus, Hexagon Composites, Nel Hydrogen, and Ryse Hydrogen.
An initial 600 FCEBs are being supported by a €40 million grant from the EU’s Connecting European Facilities (CEF) program, with 200 to be deployed in each of Denmark, Latvia, and the UK by 2023.
The Ballad of Ballard Power
Hydrogen fuel cells for buses have had a long development gestation period. In 1998, Ballard Power Systems of Vancouver, Canada was a technology darling stock. It had won orders for a number of hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) demonstrator buses, which promised clean electric power with pure water being the only waste product. But few companies better demonstrate the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies than Ballard:
Whilst Gartner did not rate HFCs in the late 1990s, here’s how the Ballad of Ballard played out. The wave of initial optimism placed the company at the Peak of Inflated Expectations. But the company quickly hit financial and physics reality, and plummeted into the Trough of Disillusionment in the early Naughts. Rumours of one of Vancouver’s Ballard HFC buses allegedly catching fire did not help.
Little was heard of Ballard for years after, but the company was quietly trudging up the Slope of Enlightenment by diligently refining its fuel cell technology. Ballard HFCs are currently powering over 100 buses worldwide, with another 500 under construction. In the UK, Ballard powered buses have amassed over 30,000 hours of fuel cell operation in London.
Hydrogen – there’s the rub
The biggest fallacy about hydrogen is to think of it as a fuel source. It needs to be created first. The principal drawback is the that it takes thrice the energy to produce hydrogen by electrolysis, the cleanest method, than the hydrogen will embody.
A case of sustainable hydrogen generation is found on the windy Orkney Islands, which have many wind turbines. Despite the popularity of electric vehicles on the island, there is nearly always excess electricity. They can’t send much of it to the mainland because of inadequate interconnector capacity. So they generate hydrogen which is used to power the ferry to the mainland.
Unfortunately, to date excess wind power only produces a limited amount of hydrogen worldwide.
The economic reality of hydrogen
- The main aspect holding back widespread hydrogen fuel cell adoption is the cost of generating hydrogen and developing the hydrogen distribution network.
- A report by the German Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE) electrical standards and research group was undertaken to compare the cost-effectiveness of battery electric multiple units (BEMU) and hydrogen electric multiple units (HEMU). The study determined that BEMUs are currently 35% cheaper to acquire and operate than hydrogen fuel cell equivalent trains (hydrail).
The study assumed that only ‘green hydrogen’ produced from renewable electricity sources will be used. However, in practice much cheaper ‘grey hydrogen’ by-product of chemical and oil industry processes may well be used.
Whilst EMU trains and city buses are different vehicles, the comparison in battery versus hydrogen fuel cells is indicative. So at this time, hydrogen fuel cell buses are typically used on routes in especially polluted corridors and cities.
So, battery buses, hydrogen buses, or both?
Hydrogen is really a means of energy storage, just like batteries and pumped storage. It is not a fuel source. But hydrogen compares poorly to those technologies, as the energy required to produce and store hydrogen is considerable. Nevertheless, despite its myriad drawbacks, hydrogen fuel cells do appear to overcome some of the drawbacks of vehicle batteries, which convinced TfL and other transport agencies to continue to evaluate fuel cell technology. To cover the spread on electric bus technology.
Both battery and hydrogen technologies still have potential to improve with additional research and development.
How the government views hydrogen vs batteries
Charged with planning for the future of transport, especially in regards to its promise to end diesel vehicle sales after 2035, the government has been studying these two electric zero emission transport technologies. We have read a number of their recent hydrogen policy reports and provide this summary:
- The government is unwilling to bet on one of battery or hydrogen for the bus and coach market. There is still uncertainty in battery technology and capability, as well as pricing. Hydrogen is viewed as more certain on these trajectories. But the current long term view (after 2035) on the split of bus/coach vehicles sold is 75% battery to 25% hydrogen overall.
- For the bus market alone, the current expectation 85% will be battery powered – the biggest issue for batteries being providing sufficient heating in winter.
- For coaches, the estimation is 60% will have batteries as the prime mover. (Hydrogen fuel cells do use batteries for storing charge for regenerative braking, but the batteries are not the primary energy source.) The biggest issue for coaches is the total battery weight to achieve long distances between charges. The average daily coach mileage is about 80km more than buses.
- Hydrogen has a better case to be used in longer range transport, such as trains and ships.
- Long term battery share is acutely price sensitive – if battery price drops enough, the expectation is that almost all HGV and buses sold post-2035 will be battery powered, as any battery impracticality is outweighed by cost. However, this does not apply to coaches for the reasons provided in point 3. Battery pricing trajectory has been be below expectations to date. If this continues, even if the curve is flatter than hydrogen fuel cells in the longer term, it will undermine the hydrogen refuelling infrastructure investment.
- Trolleybus style road wiring is under serious consideration in the UK and Europe for HGV, coaches, and buses along heavily used corridors and some motorway sections. Scania has built some pantograph HGVs to trial such an Autobahn segment in Germany <Behind Germany’s first stretch of electric highway | FleetOwner>. Even with limited overall mileage, at 750V with minimal bridge clearance required, this would be quite efficient and tilt the ratio heavily against hydrogen.
So battery buses currently have a strong lead over hydrogen buses that they are unlikely to relinquish.
The hydrogen bus RV1 history sections had been written by the late Walthamstow Writer and were updated with current developments.
This is the first in a short series looking at zero emission public transport in the UK. Hydrogen trains (hydrail) will be next.
Many thanks as well to NGH, Jonathan Roberts, and Ben Traynor.
Hydrogen seems to be in the experimental stage, and is going to cost loads and take ages to sort out. Trolley-buses with batteries would be great in the long term, but as a quick fix, there are plenty of mass-produced battery vehicles that can be bought off-the-peg, mainly from China, where whole cities have switched to battery buses. Wasting time on hydrogen dreams is not going to remove those filthy diesels from Oxford STreet.
I agree with Alex that hydrogen is a distraction. The economics of ‘green’ hydrogen are unlikely to work out, since they are even worse than the article suggests – it might take 3 times more electricity to make the hydrogen than the energy stored in it, but the fuel cells don’t have great efficiency at turning that into travelled miles either. So the only way hydrogen could be economical is via steam reformation, which is why you see so many fossil fuel companies involved. Follow the money, as the saying goes.
And we need a similar saying for “don’t believe the hand-waving around carbon capture”. This article simply lets that slide with a short “this process can be rectified with CO₂ capture”, which glosses over the real-world situation – carbon capture doesn’t work, it doesn’t work at scale, it doesn’t work economically. But is heavily promoted by fossil fuel companies and their advocates. There is a strong interest in promoting the idea that it’s just around the corner, in the hope that after enough investment in grey hydrogen, there will be sufficient sunk-cost fallacy to continue using it.
The answer to battery bus shortcomings, of range and charging time, is to focus on those challenges, not to chase a hydrogen mirage. The railway industry seems one step ahead on this, with the growing realisation that intermittent overhead wires solves a lot of problems with battery trains. Particular gains can be achieved from wiring stations and the few kilometres either side, where power demand is high and is better taken from the grid than out of the batteries. The similar solution for buses is intermittent charging during the day, either at rest breaks (stationary pantograph charging, as seen in e.g. Kraków), or overhead wires along busy routes and hilly sections. My eyes were opened by the recent LR Monday reads link to battery trolleybuses in Zurich – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmtXLoe8jog – I was surprised how quick and easy and automated it is to join and leave the wired sections, using technology available today. It’s a solved problem. And it lends itself to incremental rollout too, unlike pure trolleybuses that need full route coverage. But London runs the risk of painting itself into a corner, if it considers only overnight bus charging as viable, or is lured into short-term thinking by sly-talking fossil fuel companies.
The role for hydrogen in London is at best a minor stop-gap, and at worst a lack of forward planning. London should take the lead from cities that are much further along route to the zero-carbon end-game, and fully plan backwards from that zero-carbon goal – not fumble forwards down dead-end paths.
I understood that Thameslink-associated roadworks helped to kill RV1, rather than prolong it. The closure of Tooley Street led to it unable to serve London Bridge for many months, with the resulting time-consuming diversion needing a frequency reduction so as to remain within vehicle and driver resource limits. Further, the addition of security barriers to Tower Bridge robbed it of a couple of well-located stops here too.
In respect of ownership, I understood that all the hydrogen buses were purchased by TfL and leased to operators, so strictly the VDL fleet was not bought by First London. These remained on the RV1 until 2019, then being transferred (along with the Van Hools) to route 444, before withdrawal in spring 2020.
I’d also be pleased to learn of the source of the cost of a double-decker at £400,000 – Liverpool City Combined Authority papers estimate £540,000 (i.e. more than twice a diesel equivalent) while TfL published figures with the pre-collapsed Wrightbus at £500,000.
@ Andy Allan
I’ve been arguing the case for trolleybuses in London on LR for a while now (that topic is one of the few that lead me to comment). Some wires on Oxford Street and a few other major thoroughfares would solve most of the pollution problems not caused by tyres very quickly. You probably wouldn’t need that many new buses (you could probably convert the Borismasters and fit them with trolley poles).
But no, apparently Hydrogen is better….
Also. The claim that London will have the biggest zero emission fleet in Europe is dubious, not just because of the dubious source of Hydrogen, but also because many other European cities have or will have extensive electric bus fleets. The bigger issue is that most cities with bus demand as high as London (ignoring Covid) tend to rebuild routes as light rail or to use larger vehicles fairly quickly, which is almost always electrified (and much more efficient to boot). Ideally, running buses every 2-3 minutes should not be a long term strategy.
Like others, I remain rather hydrogen sceptical- though perhaps better for buses than for trains (just electrify the damn railways). But it does amuse me when there’s much attention paid to how much energy is put in to produce it, especially when the alternative being discussed is fossil fuels- there’s very rarely discussion of how much energy it takes extract, refine and distribute petrol, or the emissions involved in that
Alex McKenna & Andy Allen have “The right sow by the ear” – for reasons which I’m listing below, in addition to their comments.
Quoting Andy: The railway industry seems one step ahead on this, with the growing realisation that intermittent overhead wires solves a lot of problems with battery trains. And a similar approach with buses sees charging points or stations at the route termini, or even some of the longer-time intermediate stops, perhaps? It’s a solved problem. Precisely
DM1
Unfortunately Trolleybuses are officially deeply unfashionable & unloved in this country, as Leeds found out to its’ cost.
Those of us old enough to remember the previous generation of “trolleys” have always regretted their passing.
However, hydrogen buses can store more energy on board than equivalent battery buses, …. At the moment, maybe, perhaps.
However, battery technology is improving very rapidly, with a recent development being an (experimental) rapid-charge version, with high capacity.
The problem with Hydrogen is “Energy Density” – which is why many informed people think, that for railway operation, “Hydrogen is vapourware” ( Yes, I know! ) – but that constraint might not apply for road vehicles, with lower masses to move, shorter runs & better recharging opportunities.
Trialling such new transport technology is not cheap.
Indeed – this is almost a re-run of the similar trialling of new transport technologies in the period 1900-1914, where electric tram, electric bus & petrol ( later diesel ) buses were competing. Unfortunately, it’s entirely possible, that, without a massive localised fraud, electric buses could have taken over in London in about 1910.
You mention JIVE – what effect will “Brexit” have on JIVE – does anyone have any information on this, please?
The main aspect holding back widespread hydrogen fuel cell adoption is the cost of generating hydrogen and developing the hydrogen distribution network.
I might dispute that, on the grounds of actual complexity of handling the stuff – Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to handle, because of the small molecular size – give it the slightest possible opportunity & it will leak out & – quite literally – float away. I’m discounting the popular “fire risk” scare here, incidentally.
4. Hydrogen has a better case to be used in longer range transport, such as trains and ships. I disagree – insufficient Energy Density, as stated above.
5. Long term battery share is acutely price sensitive And, battery prices are still dropping & efficiencies are rising – on an almost monthly basis.
[ If I had to bet, I would bet on batteries. ]
Lastly, an double actual engineering question:
1: What is the overall efficiency of any “Hydrogen” bus, compared to batteries?
2: What is the Energy Density of Hydrogen power, compared to battery power?
What about trolley buses with small batteries so the routes can be extended beyond the wires?
@ MATTHEW HUTTON
They are known as IMC (in-motion-charging) trolleybuses. They tend to have a range of about 30km. Basically any new trolleybus system being built today (and most expansion of existing networks) uses such vehicles. Between 1/3 and 2/3 of the route is wired (generally either sections with gradients or corridors served by many routes), with the bus using its battery for the rest of the route. The main advantages are that the battery required is much smaller than for other types of electric buses, and that it doesn’t have to stop anywhere for extended periods of time (requiring space, extra vehicles, and extra drivers) for charging. The smaller battery is significant – as it takes fewer resources to produce, and is used more intensively, meaning its impact on the environment is much less than would be the case were other types of battery buses to be used.
@ Greg T
Everything I’ve seen and read suggests you’re probably right – but I think it would only take one successful reintroduction for them to become more widely used again. If TfL were to sit down and do the maths, taking vehicle lifetime, emissions, and whole-life costs into account, I think they would come to the same conclusion as I have – that trolleybuses on high-frequency, high demand routes would be the most efficient and effective option. If any city would have the political clout to push such a project through, it is London.
@DM1 The IMC advantages shown are vs Battery vehicles, the other advantages against Trollies are stringing the city centre reduces the infrastructure, shares it amongst the most intensely used routes, allows vehicles to manoeuvre out of linear sequence, eliminates polluted air in the core, and vehicles can connect at layover points.
To stay on topic (Hydrogen?) there is no reason why IMC cannot be the ‘primary’ driver and fuel cells the ‘extender’.
Trolleys being ‘unfashionable’ and people ‘liking’ trams there’s no reason why a new ‘BorrisTram’ could not run on rubber-clad wheels like a Paris Metro and be fitted with side skirts and a pantograph instead of poles.
Streets sensitive to visual clutter could be fuel cell zones, ground power options also available.
Have there been any measurements, or any remedial action, for enclosed bus stations (such as Canning Town) or bus garages?
@ ALEKS
What you’re describing is more or less a rubber-tyred tram. There are several of those in France, but they have had very mixed success – many have been converted to normal trams later. In order to use a pantagraph you need either two of them, or some kind of metal rail for the return current. Using two pantographs in a city causes complicated space issues, and if you’re going to build a rail, you might as well put two in and build a proper tram system.
I’m not sure using hydrogen as a range extender is practical either. The problem with hydrogen is its lack of energy density. For short distances beyond the wires (and within a city you’re unlikely to need more than 30km round trip) a battery is likely the better option.
What irritates me about the entire hydrogen discussion (and the discussion around decarbonising London’s transport in general), is that instead of considering and implementing relatively mature technologies, with a proven and relatively cheap cost (IMC trolleybuses, trams, even e-bikes), lots of money and effort is spent on experiments that are marketed as being cheaper, cleaner, or faster, but end up being none of the above. Yes, there is a place for innovation and experimenting with new technologies, but not by ignoring the decades of innovation elsewhere and feeling the need to re-invent the wheel, and failing repeatedly. In the time since the first hybrid, battery and hydrogen buses started running in London, the entire bus network could have been electrified completely using existing technologies and be completely zero-emissions by now.
London can afford to invest properly – and in my view hydrogen is being to an extent used as an excuse not to invest in long-term, fixed infrastructure. Grey hydrogen production facilites will be built (at great cost), but will never be as efficient or clean as electrifying properly. In the Orkney example, the long term solution is not to convert the entire island to hydrogen, but to build that misssing interconnector capacity so that the excess energy can be used elsewhere where it is needed. I could mention the same problem with rail electrification (that is exactly the same, but on a much larger scale), but that would be going even further off-topic.
The difficulty of producing green hydrogen “cheaply” by electrolysis from “surplus” wind, is that the capital cost of the electrolysis equipment is substantial. So you don’t want to use it only during occasional peaks of high wind production. With a lot of wind and frequent surpluses, as on the windy remote island, or a decade or so in the future if you believe the wind construction plans, then you can run a few electrolysers and get a fair load factor. But as you increase the number of electrolyers, the load factor falls off, if you want to use a high fraction of the surplus wind. It is not easily scalable.
The difficulty with “blue hydrogen” is that not all the CO2 is captured in a practical scheme. So it isn’t that much lower carbon than natural gas. We have no clear route to CCS – pilot schemes were cancelled for costing too much. Will there be a sufficient time window to invest in blue hydrogen, between the point of CCS being practically available, and the need to move to lower carbon energy?
Hydrogen is neither a cheap nor an easy method to get to low carbon. It will be of value when it is cheaper than the alternatives.
Interesting stuff, but a minor correction (perhaps not that minor for Orcadians): there’s no such place as the “Isle of Orkney”, Orkney (or the Orkneys) being a group of islands. [Cheers, fixed. LBM]
Fascinating stuff – have you seen the latest announcements from Toyota on solid state batteries? They claim to have solved the outstanding problems with the concept and are expecting to manufacture affordable batteries with 5x the energy density of current (Lithium-ion) tech and be fully chargeable in 10 minutes by 2023. That might give Hydrogen a run for its money.
Distribution costs and associated pollutants are also often glossed over with hydrogen – a key advantage to batteries is that the power distribution grid is already there and ready to use.
Nevertheless I can see both co-existing some way into the future, as Diesel and Petrol have for many years.
@ Paul
Having such batteries is good, but by no means the whole story. In order to charge a battery of any meaningful size that fast, you need a lot of power. That requires fairly substantial infrastructure that isn’t there yet and (without substantial mitigation) would cause extremely large peaks and troughs on grid demand. It’s definitely a step forward, but there are still substantial issues to resolve until their use becomes feasible at full speed on a large scale.
Paul
If Toyota are correct, it won’t just give Hydrogen a run for its money – it will wipe “Hydrogen” off the transport-power map entirely.
[ If, note ]
As DM1 notes, there’s the risk of going off-topic here, but…
A lot of these problems are “political” – & I don’t mean party-political, either.
Politicians want “it” whatever it is ,right now, or within their term of office & they have a weakness for “NEW!” ( Sometimes expressed as: “Shiny!” ) with no concern for practicalities, or whether it’s been tried before & failed, & of course within their current party dogma.
Whether it’s road or rail transport, H2 falls into this category, unfortunately.
So, it doesn’t matter to them that Trolleybuses or Trams ( Or main-line electrification ) have been conclusively proven to be both cheaper & more efficient in the long run – all they can see is both the first cost & whether it fulfils the “Eye-candy” criterion.
The reason TfL is buying hydrogen buses is that new electric double decker buses take 4 hours to recharge, according to IanVisits night buses are in service 23 hours a day, I think they run 5.30 am to 4.30 am as 4.30 am counts as the last bus of the day (in the past I couldn’t use my freedom bus pass 4.30am-9 am) and to replace one diesel night bus will need two electric buses costing more than one hydrogen bus (I think you posted a link to an article claiming some US bus firms are having problems with the mulit-hour recharge time of EV buses on some routes).
World’s first electric double decker buses that carried passengers in London 1907-10 and Brighton 1908-17 had swappable batteries that were replaced at the Depots in 3 mins. As concerns trollybuses, won’t TfL need planning permission to install overhead cables on some roads owned by local councils ? And what if nimby’s object ?
Hitachi claims it’s new battery trains have 50% less life cycle costs than hydrogen but Alstom recent document says that if the 600 mile hydrogen Coradia iLint is powered by batteries they will weight 33 tonnes.
Leo Murray Riding Sunbeams, which is developing trackside solar farms to power electric trains, said at the Transport Committee Trains fit for the future(?) session 11 Nov 2020 that he thinks that part electrification with battery trains and fast chargers at stations will be cheaper than hydrogen.
View from Network Rail and Decarbonisation Taskforce to the Transport Committee is that hydrogen doesn’t have the energy density for 125 mph and heavy freight trains. However, the H2@Rail Workshop USA 2019, the experts thought that liquid hydrogen freight trains are viable. I think ammonia (hydrogen + nitrogen) is better with a higher energy density than liquid hydrogen which only needs to be stored at -35°C not -253°C. Reaction Engines and STFC joint study in 2020 found ammonia can power airliners without larger fuel tanks.
@dm1
I think you’re right, but a less obvious win is that EV batteries will amount to a colossal energy store in years to come, which implies there are big environmental and economic gains to be had by offering deep discounts on slow overnight charging and slapping a premium on rapid daytime charging.
Overnight excess energy could also be used to produce Hydrogen, but with much lower efficiency and additional cost for storage and distribution.
Two questions spring to mind:
Why were the first fuel cell buses noisy?
For heating battery buses, aren’t storage heaters charged from the mains whilst the batteries are charged the obvious answer?
Batteries with en-route charging seems the long term answer to me, as other commenters have already pointed out hydrogen seems like an unnecessary diversion
Comparing hydrogen made from extracted carbon with hydrogen used as an electrical component linking intermittent renewably electric sources with mobile is misleading. It assumes the present economic model is fixed while it is actually dynamic. By the time large numbers of trains and buses can be produced, the concept of extraction itself may be in decline. It’s far cheaper to produce fertilizer via steam reforming of “mined” gas but that hasn’t slowed the advent of new plants for making ammonia from wind and hydroelectricity. New technologies are always more costly than the old ones they supplant. That’s the nature of scale economics. But transistors, having appeared, were always going to replace vacuum tubes, whatever their initial cost, and flat screens did for glass picture tubes. CO2 sequestration is a patch on carbon extraction but not even a semi-permanent fix. Electrochemistry is in the ascendancy and it won’t halt or reverse. Long-term investments in cleaning up after carbon will falter and electrochemistry will evolve ever faster, just as transistors went from hand-wired circuit boards to integrated chips. The future can no more be priced-out using existing numbers than prospectors can comb the outback expecting to discover new trans-uranium elements. Buses and trains are long life investments. Basing choices on past or present energy numbers doesn’t work.
Article on this very subject ( well, trains ) in the February issue of Modern Railways.
Captain Deltic’s conclusion seems to be that, for trains, it’s simply not going to work, for the Energy Density reasons we have already mentioned, & that improved batteries + “Knitting” are the practical answer
@Stan Thompson
It sounds like you might be making an interesting point but I can’t figure out what it is.
Whatever wonders scientific advance manages to deliver, one of the things it has never done – and never will – is change the laws of physics.
I am surprised that the UK is considering Trolley Bus style road wiring on some motorway sections. The government is currently not able to fund overhead electrification on the busy Midland Main Line from London to Sheffield and Leeds.
I believe Trolley Bus style road wiring is better concentrated on the urban roads to extend the route milage of battery electric buses.
A big headache for the RV1 in the early days was sourcing the Hydrogen.
The plan I think was to extract it using a suitable plan in Havering. The Council refused permission on ‘safety’ grounds – I think against officer advice.
@Jason
Recharging a bus takes much less bus downtime if you do it with a forklift truck instead of a cable connection, ie by battery swap. There is increased asset cost in owning additional batteries, but at least you don’t need to increase the downtime of the whole bus. So keeping a bus running 23/7 does add cost, but the balance of advantage isn’t necessarily making battery impractical. Once upon a time it was proposed that battery swap would be a common method of refuelling all kinds of electric vehicles, but that never happened for a variety of reasons. Doesn’t mean it isn’t suitable for some specific cases like bus fleets. Manufacturers would need to recognise there was a demand for swap-out recharging and make buses/batteries and depot charging infrastructure in that fashion.
Potentially a more serious impediment is giving bus depots sufficient electrical connection that they can recharge the high kVA total of batteries they need to recharge at practical cost. It can be very expensive if they are not conveniently located for the grid. If a new high power connection of a few miles has to be made, that can have a cost of multiple millions, especially if it has to be buried in an urban area. Probably the local company would quote several years to actually build it. I heard of a case of someone being quoted 6 years for such a line.
The alternative is to relocate bus depots to locations convenient for the electricity system. This is also difficult as bus depots are not far off waste incinerators in the pecking order of ease of gaining planning permission. Maybe it gets sorted out when we have a massive expansion of electricity distribution systems to cater for these new large demands, and they explicitly plan to be able to serve predicted high demand locations, and fund that expansion in some more generally socialised way. But there’s not much of that expected to happen in a hurry.
So possibly the biggest impediment for electrifying buses in the short run is wiring the depots up, rather than the obvious one of “what is the most suitable technology”.
@Ivan
I second pretty much everything you said but I just wanted to add something to your comment, “…when we have a massive expansion of electricity distribution systems to cater for these new large demands”
In reality, for most domestic/non-intensive use of EVs you won’t need to re-engineer the grid. It’s now a requirement that all EV charging points be “smart”, so you can flex the EV load up and down based on the requirements of the non-EV load. Think of it as filling in the troughs of the duck curve with a higher base load, as opposed to heightening the peaks significantly.
Clive Broadhead
Very slight correction ( I think )
The government is currently not
ablewilling to fund overhead electrification on the busy Midland Main Line from London to Sheffield and Leeds.@CLIVE BROADHEAD I am surprised that the UK is considering Trolley Bus style road wiring on some motorway sections.
This is the nearside lane for electric HGVs to recharge and trunk their long hauls, while running on batteries in the urban legs.
@IVAN Once upon a time it was proposed that battery swap would be a common method of refuelling all kinds of electric vehicles, but that never happened for a variety of reasons.
Tesla when developing the S considered the swappable model but abandoned it in preference to developing their supercharger network. That time 2011-13 Israel was leading in swappables with their Better Place system. Today the action is in China where NIO (Tesla rival) have completed their millionth battery swap.
https://insideevs.com/news/448165/nio-completed-1-millionth-battery-swap/
The car is cheaper to buy without the battery and the user can swap a larger capacity unit when needed for a longer trip.
https://guidehouseinsights.com/news-and-views/chinas-battery-swap-trend-is-way-ahead
@Aleks Battery swapping is a bit “good in theory but difficult in practice” when it comes to private vehicles like Teslas. Most EVs are designed around a “skateboard” which keeps the weight low down in the car and improves the rigidity of the chassis. What with the HV connectors to unplug, and removing the metal shielding underneath (which is in sealed to prevent a stray piece of debris being flicked up and piercing the battery), not to mention the manpower and machine required to ensure the swap has been done correctly; it ended up being more faff than (and almost as time-consuming as) just plugging the damn thing into a 150 kW DC rapid for a full charge – hence Tesla choosing to invest in their Supercharger network instead. Also what do you do if the person before you hasn’t taken as good care of their battery as you have? What if it’s an old battery and the maximum capacity has dropped to 30% lower than the one you just swapped out?
Battery swapping is a lot more viable for scooters/motorbikes, and I’d be interested in seeing the feasibility for buses too, but it’s probably a non-starter for private cars.
This is also assuming you need a rapid recharge in the first place of course, if your car is sat there not doing anything for 95% of the time, THAT is the time when you should be recharging it. (In which case you only very rarely need to worry about the speed at which you can pack electrons into the battery, we’re talking fewer than 3% of journeys for private vehicles).
Tom Baxter, visiting professor of chemical engineering at Strathclyde University and a retired technical director at Genesis Oil and Gas Consultants, provides his analysis on the likelihood of green hydrogen for transport:
“This week I attended three hydrogen webinars. By participating in these sessions I’m hoping a light comes as to what I’m missing. Not so, they all reinforce that the case for the role of hydrogen in delivering net zero is evidence weak.”
“if we are going to have all this surplus renewable electricity in the future, why don’t we export the electricity [to where it’s needed] without the energy transition losses and complexity associated with hydrogen?”
@LBM
That would suggest that Betteridge’s law of headlines holds in LR too.
Or it would, if London had a thought through decarbonisation strategy.
LBM / DMI
Further to your comments, the headline in the “Modern Railways” article about this is:
“Boring Batteries beat Hydrogen Hype”.
Quite.
I think a lot of the comments, unlike the article, seem not to be grasping the specific problem TfL are setting out to solve. If TfL’s question is “how can we improve London’s air quality, specifically NOX emissions, in the next few years”, then that points in a different direction to the question “how can we achieve zero carbon by 2030-something”. It is entirely possible that hydrogen buses might be a reasonable interim solution for the next 10-15 years (ie beyond the typical service life in London of a bus) even if battery powered buses are the long term solution.
It is clear that diesel engines are increasingly unacceptable in urban areas and it is possible to imagine a time, not that far away, when operating a diesel engine in central London is either illegal or subject to a prohibitive fee. There are implications there for TfL as a bus operator, but buses and public transport generally are also a tiny part of the overall number of diesel engines operating in London – there are far more vans, lorries and items of construction machinery (surely no coincidence that a member of the JCB family is interested in this). So to an extent what happens in the bigger transport field will determine what happens with buses. Maybe battery technology will get better and heavy duty charging infrastructure (swappable or not) will become widespread, or else there will be some kind of nationwide (indeed global) hydrogen distribution system and hydrogen propulsion systems will be the norm. Or both will happen. In any case, it makes a big difference to the long term prospects for buses.
Trolleybuses would have been great to have started on years ago but the thing that makes stringing up wires on say Oxford Street difficult is not the wires themselves, it is finding sites for substations. I can’t see that happening without compulsory purchase which means a public enquiry etc etc – maybe if you started now you could have trolleybuses operating in the 2030s?
@Greg T: I’m old enough (ie. more than about three years old) to remember when Roger Ford was confidently asserting that battery power wasn’t be viable, either…
What is the Energy Density of Hydrogen power
Well, hydrogen has about three times the gravimetric energy density (in MJ/kg) of diesel fuel, which is why you can use it as a rocket fuel. So many times greater than that of batteries. But diesel has greater volumetric density (in MJ/L) than hydrogen. So it depends which matters more, weight or volume? Maybe weight for a bus where you can store gas on the roof – more of a problem for a train which has to fit in the British loading gauge.
So the question might be, what is the weight (or mass?) of a compressed hydrogen tank compared to a battery containing the same amount of energy?
@Peewee
Thanks for your intelligent comments. One point, if EVs were the only source of growth in electricity demand, then I agree with you about the need for expansion of electric systems. Indeed I am aware of a comprehensive study reckoned on the subject that demonstrated that something like 80-90% of local distribution systems can cope with the addition of EV demand, even if we all had EVs, especially if demand is smoothed over the day. Though the cost of dealing with the remaing 10-20% would not be small.
But EVs are not the only large new source of demand for electricity, they are not even the largest. When you add in the transition of space heating and industrial processes (and possibly/probably commercial vehicles) to mainly electrically run systems, then I think it is hard to assert that we will not need very large new increments to our electricity transmission and distribution systems.
@Stan
Electrochemistry is in the ascendancy… But the one thing you can’t do is beat the laws of thermodynamics. There will be no Moore’s Law with electrochemistry, at least in relation to energetic efficiency which drives many of the arguments in relation to plausible future energy set-ups. That is because the thermodynamic limits are generally already fairly closely approached with known set-ups. So the dynamic is quite different from the history of innovation in electronics.
I’m not aware of a thermodynamic limit preventing further size and cost reduction of batteries, so I trust that will go on apace. But it is a substantial constraint on any improvement in the economics of the production of hydrogen by electrolysis, and its subsequent use in fuel cells.
Following along the general discussion with several points.
Roof storage of Hydrogen is not a solution for double-deckers.
Whilst weight density is less of an issue on rails than buses space utilisation and energy use is a compromise on all transport modes.
UK infrastructure investment has been a case of muddling through for decades now. Whatever comes will not be substantive before the 2030s anyway. The UK however does like to evaluate and develop alternate concepts with promising ones then produced elsewhere.
The argument about network capacity has been addressed with the emphasis on smart meter demand management. People are saying there is insufficient capacity to recharge the existing converted vehicle fleet all at once but that is not the design. EV fleets will grow gradually as will renewable generation.
The purchased battery storage capacity will be ‘unused’ 90% of the time. The intention is to utilise the available stored battery power to augment generated power when demanded with incentivised tariffs for leaving vehicle batteries connected.
What is not catered for is a new generation abandoning personal transport so that most usage is in highly utilised shared autonomous vehicles increasingly fast charged during peak loads. This transformative trend though could equally be matched by a decline in commuting and travel needs.
Present day vehicle mix on any high pedestrian traffic street within the congestion zone is still largely diesel buses and black cabs.
Assuming that cold fusion isn’t going to be a thing to power busses in the next 50 years (light humor), one technology that hasn’t been mentioned is hydrogen storage technology.
In simple.terms.its either stored as a gas (at environmental temperature) or if cooled below its critical temperature it can be stored as a liquid. As this temperature is incredibly low, liquid hydrogen isn’t the easiest or safest (temperature related) thing to go around storing or decanting.
Gaseous hydrogen isn’t that easy to store at a very high density as it requires tremendous pressure = very heavy tanks or large tanks at a lower pressure.
One thing that is on the horizon is the use of gels with micro pores in to allow the gas to be stored millions of micro bubbles within the gel matrix.
Its still a few years away, but a lot of $$$ is being invested.
Ultimately batteries will never (at least in the next 15 years) be able to be safely charged up in the 30 seconds it takes now to fill up a conventional fuel tank, nor store the same amount of energy to be able to power a heavy vehicle for long duration journeys.
Ultimately there is going to be a need to multiple methods of powering vehicles like these, including induction charging stations/road ways, overhead power lines, hydrogen, and battery power.
Ultimately they are going to cost more upfront and also require more to maintain/repair them.
On a side note, I also find it strange that the fuel duty remains off bus diesel – surely this would be a driver for change in the industry as well – just like it was supposed to be for the general public.
On another side note, one does have to remember that compared to 50 years ago the air quality London has been improved massively, and one should congratulate those involved in that transition (ie much more fuel efficient engines, removal of coal fired power stations etc etc) before blaming present day diesel engine for all our woes. Just imagine what it could still be like if all that innovation hadn’t happened.
@JC
For vehicles in general you are right, and there are likely to be multiple solutions used. But for buses, the madness is that the technology already exists, and in the long run is generally cheaper than diesel, once you make the capital investment to install the necessary infrastructure (that is amortised very quickly). Whether that will every be true for hydrogen is questionable at best.
Unlike most other traffic, buses at run consistently along the same routes, at the same frequency for years on end (timetable tinkering aside). That means you can select vehicles to match the range required and install infrastructure only in the small number of places it is needed, meaning the vehicles do not require a massive range beyond the infrastructure.
The argument that cars spend 90% of the time parked, just does not hold for buses, so while slow charging will be feasible for most EVs, most of the time, the same is not true for buses unless you buy significantly more of them than necessary (with the corresponding costs, environmental impact and space requirement). That leaves you with opportunity charging and IMC, with IMC (in most studies I’ve seen) being the better option in many cases.
@Ian J
I don’t think finding locations for substations is an insurmountable problem. For one, London had a trolleybus network, so some of the historical substation locations may still be usable. Furthermore London has a very widespread 750V DC electrification network (namely LU and most railways in south London), which should have some space for additional substations due to rotary converters being replaced with solid state converters. I’m not saying it would be easy, but far from impossible. Trolleybuses (compared to trains) are quite slow, so their power deaw is lower as well. If someone were to give the order, I think the necessary equipment could be installed in less than 5 years – get some experienced contractors from abroad and a motivated mayor and it would probably take even less time than that. The problem is that rather than getting on with it, 5 years would be spent writing reports and performing reviews instead. That seems to be what tends to happen with capital infrastructure in this country.
There is no Hydrogen city, Toyota is farthest with developments.
Meanwhile Shenzhen has 16,000 buses and 22,000 taxis from BYD operated by 3 companies. Fully Charged have done a feature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P7fTPLSMeI
They also banned scooters and motorcycles.
The London clean-up of soot and smog cut Tuberculosis, focus now is asthma. I worked on a shop-front a few years ago with tiling steps on my knees at push chair height. It is way more toxic than the air monitors we use at or above adult head height. Maybe vertical exhaust stacks on buses could help.
Interestingly Tesla reported that on holiday weekends some owners were queuing for 2 hours to access their Superchargers. Their cross-country recharging stations are solar powered battery banks.
JC: Far better volumetric energy density can (in theory) be achieved by storing the hydrogen as ammonia. Like so many of these things, the technolgies to produce green ammonia (i.e. not Haber-Bosch), and to burn it effectively, are “not quite ready”. But that seems to me like a much more promising approach than very low temperatures or very high pressures. (Of course an even better volumetric energy density is achieved by packing the hydrogen as methane, but sadly that involves planet-deadly carbon atoms).
@Malcolm – Powerpaste in Germany is a magnesium hydride when mixed with water from an onboard tank creates hydrogen-derived electric power. Being trialled in cartridge form for 2 wheelers.
Airbus are still proposing hydrogen fuelled flight at Paris for the 2050 carbon zero objectives.
The energy cost of Hydrogen has been questioned. A couple of years ago I was offered a domestic tariff with free overnight electricity. There are offshore wind-farms being constructed a long way from markets where transmission losses must be a factor.
These schemes like NortH2 Europe’s largest Offshore Wind to Hydrogen project is more efficient in terms of transmission losses. NortH2 aims to produce green hydrogen using electricity from offshore wind off the coast of the Netherlands exceeding 10+ GW by 2040. NortH2 infrastructure will consist of: the new offshore wind farms in the North Sea, the infrastructure to bring the power onshore, the new electrolyser plant, the pipelines to deliver the hydrogen to the industry clusters in Northwest Europe, and underground storage of hydrogen in salt caverns.
Very late, but:
Diesel bus route 343 was then extended from Aldgate to Tower Gateway
The 343 was extended from City Hall/Tower Bridge Road to Aldgate to replace the 40 which no longer goes up Fenchurch Street but now heads across Blackfriars bridge….
It terminates inside Aldgate bus station, but starts by heading up to Houndsditch so that it can serve the bus stop opposite Aldgate Station.
Ryse Hydrogen plans to install a 6 MW electrolyzer at the Sizewell nuclear site in Suffolk as a launchpad for mass production of low carbon hydrogen in and around the future freeport of Felixstowe, company founder Jo Bamford told S&P Global Platts March 3.
The Felixstowe/Harwich Freeport East bid was one of eight freeports given the go-ahead by the government in March 3’s Budget.
“The prime minister has said the UK will be putting a big bet on hydrogen, and the Budget’s green light for the Freeport East Hydrogen Hub is a major step towards delivering on these words,” Bamford said.
Ryse is to work with EDF Energy to develop an electrolyzer connected to EDF’s Sizewell B nuclear plant, producing hydrogen at baseload for the diggers and buses needed to help decarbonize construction of EDF’s proposed 3.2 GW Sizewell C project.
Elsewhere, Ryse also plans to meet local demand cases with a 10 MW electrolyzer in Kent directly connected to a 120 MW wind farm, and a 6 MW electrolyzer in Scotland connected to wind, solar and battery storage south of Glasgow, part of the Hy2Go project.
England’s first hydrogen double-deckers launched in London.
“The new fleet will be the second in the UK, after Wrightbus launched its world-first hydrogen double-deckers in Aberdeen, Scotland, in January this year. The vehicles mark another step towards making London’s bus fleet zero-emission and cleaning up London’s toxic air.
“The 20 new environmentally friendly buses will produce no pollution from their exhausts and join more than 500 electric buses in the core fleet which are already zero-emission. The new hydrogen fuel cell double-decker buses are first being introduced on route 7 between East Acton and Oxford Circus. The use of hydrogen-powered buses in addition to battery electric models enables Transport for London (TfL) to match the right fuel with the operational requirements of the network. Hydrogen buses store large quantities of energy, which can make them well-suited to longer routes.”
Montpellier confirmed that it canceled an order for 50 hydrogen fuel cell buses after realizing that it would be cheaper and more efficient to order battery-electric buses instead.
I don’t think hydrogen for transport is remotely dead. Electric cars might be easier to get to market but and its a big but they just don’t even nearly offer the range that many customers need without a big step in battery energy density or charging time. I agree that urban commuting and van delivery is fine with existing products, but not much beyond that.
Much has been said above about the impossibility of improving the efficiency of hydrogen production and fuel cell efficiency. Just remember that the theoretical efficiency of a PEM electrolyser is 94% (80% currently) and that of a fuel cell 91% (55% currently). There is plenty of scope for development.
Hydrogen distribution could conceivably use the existing gas grid that was originally designed for coal gas which was largely hydrogen (this has already been proposed for fuelling space heating). Further pressurisation would occur at the fuelling point.
The energy volume density issue can be minimised by pressurisation and at practical pressures the combined weight of fuel and pressure vessel will be similar to a fully fuelled diesel vehicle. A lot less than the ton or more of batteries in current vehicles designed for anything more than urban commuting.
If such a system were to be availably, I believe it would be hard to sell other than dedicated urban battery vehicles.