Maurice Courtois
Susanna Ferrara
ENG 111/9 E60W
4/3/2011
1. Publication Data
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, B. Kroposki, J. Levene, and K. Harrison, P.K. Ken, F. Novachek “Electrolysis: Information and Opportunities for Electric Power Utilities”
Sept, 2006 Web. (3 Apr. 2011)
[http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/40605.pdf]
2. Response
This article sounds like a hidden platform to make peoples swallow an increase of between three and four times the current price of gasoline using hydrogen as fuel. This is if renewable energy would be used to double electric capacity of the United Sates. Instead of... simply adding coal plant that is much cheaper and could be use to produce Hydrogen much cheaply. If one can read between the line clearly, unless the price of making electricity from wind or solar source decrease dramatically lower than burning coal, which is probably not going to happen, that we will probably not be using renewable energy as source for hydrogen extraction.
3. Summary
In the article “Electrolysis: Information and Opportunities for Electric Power Utilities” a great amount of energy has been invest at trying to make hydrogen appealing to the Electric Power Utilities. A very basic parallel is being made between the hypothetical use of hydrogen in the transport sector, mainly as fuel, to justify a possible double increase of energy use eventually in form of electricity.
In this article a bashing of the current most widely use of natural gas reformation is being done do justify that all the market place for hydrogen is free to be taken by the electric company. It is clearly said that domestic production of gas is very limited. Therefore, electric company would have to provide all the electricity need to extract hydrogen by mean of electrolyzing. A very thoroughly analyze is being done to demonstrate the use of renewable energy such as wind and solar as electrolyzing energy source for making hydrogen. By a very simplistic formula, calculation for the minimum cost of electricity is being made to calculate the viability of using renewable energy as electrical source for electrolyze. A hypothetical plan is being made on the decrease of prize of energy later as well as an increase in performance of converting electricity to hydrogen using electrolyze.
To conclude, in the article it is very clear that with current information and technology that using renewable energy to produce hydrogen will not meet the target of between $2 and $3/kg. However, others reasons for using hydrogen by power utilities companies to actually increase profitability and efficiency of current technology are being proposed. For example, it is said that current efficiency of the electrical grid in the U.S. is ranging between 40% and 60% and the off peak electricity could be stored as in form of hydrogen to be use during peak time.
4. Evaluation
1. This article should be very reliable as it has been written by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Studies and article found on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory website are mandated and authorized by the U.S. Department of Energy.
2. This article was very clear and focus. The main objective of this article is to convince the power utilities company to start harvesting hydrogen from renewable energy. In this article, the government makes it clear that it eventually envisioned that hydrogen could potentially replace conventional fuel for the transport industry. However, it seems very clear that with the help of this document, utilities company may actually use this information to prove worthless to invest in renewable energy for making hydrogen. As clearly it would not be profitable in a long term unless both the price of renewable electricity is going done drastically and the price of both crude oils and coal goes up also drastically. The author present the fact very objectively throughout the document and present many supporting detail against the use of renewable energy for producing hydrogen, in the point of view of a utility company. I will use this article to provide evidence of the non sense of using renewable energy to produce hydrogen.