this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023

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142

Hydrogen vehicles in Denmark left without fuel as all commercial refuelling stations shuttered (www.hydrogeninsight.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (4 children)

lol

lmao, even

Just build a fucking train, it's stupid that Denmark doesn't just have rail everywhere. DSB is a joke. Banedanmark is underfunded. Light rail doesn't go anywhere useful unless you live in Copenhagen. Intercity is way too expensive to matter unless you get discount tickets a month in advance. IC trains are so frequently not-running that it's become a major point in my buddys argument for working from home.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Come to BC. We have trains from Vancouver going to Seattle and Portland(via US run Amtrak(70-100$ US), a transit train from Mission to Vancouver and back, once a day each way(5-15$ depending on distance) and a 3000$ a ticket train going to Jasper, Alberta from Vancouver BC and back.

Yaaay Conservatives. Thanks for ruining passenger rail.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hmmm... surprising, US has similar issues for unsurprising reasons.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's probably the exact same reasons, actually.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But in Merica Cars are democracy, Denmark shoils build an 80 lane highway

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

USA! USA! USA!

[+] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

IDK if size really matters here. Connecting Chicago to Milwaukee (100mi) with HSR probably makes sense

there are many others too:

Chicago-Indianapolis (200mi)

Chicago-St Louis (300mi)

Chicago-Pittsburgh (500mi)

so many good connections

[+] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

passengers can't ride freight rail tho

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think size should matter more.

In USA/Canada we end up with population pimples with little in between. This is perfect for HSR, since there are very few required stations between primary cities.

Ottawa-Montréal, for example, is ~200km apart with no major centers in between, so an HSR can cross that distance with no stops

Toronto-Montréal is ~550km apart, with one possible stop in Kingston if the train splits for Ottawa. Again an HSR could make great time here. With the TGV's 270kph station-station time, it would be 2 hours, slightly faster than flying + security (2h10-2h30) and less than half the driving time.

I'm knot as knowledgable about US geography, but I'm positive there and many city pairs like this on the east and west coasts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is perfect for travel but not passenger load which is what makes a transport system economical. Rail costs several million dollars per kilometre, so a Toronto to Montreal would cost at least 500 million, closer to a few billion. And if it travels through low density land you won't be getting many additional passengers except those that actually live in Toronto and Montreal. This is why HSR is in densely populated areas like France or Japan, or China. There is an actual large passenger load that makes the investment worthwhile. An even easier-to-see example is that city driving is much slower than on highways, if point-to-point travel time was really the function of public transit then intercity travel would be prioritised not the much larger and more economical street stops that every public transit system uses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

so a Toronto to Montreal would cost at least 500 million, closer to a few billion

$3 billion on 1.7km of Gardener Expressway repair. $3.6 billion for Turcot interchange replacement. No one bats an eye at those costs.

passenger load which is what makes a transport system economical

Toronto-Montréal is the busiest domestic flight route, followed by Toronto-Ottawa. Add Chicago and New York to capture the two busiest routes between the two countries (both in the top 20 international flights). Plus however many bus, train, and drive.

Edit: just plugged 15 Nov into Google flights; there are 46 flights from Toronto to Montreal that day (Pearson and Island combined).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

DSB is a joke, Banedanmark is a myth we are all controlled by something greater, TRAINS DNA of public infastructure

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hydrogen never really made sense for cars, the infrastructure and storage is too expensive. But I wonder if it'd work for trains that haven't been fully electrified with overhead cables yet. You'd need much less infrastructure at just a few locations.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nope. They tried hydrogen trains in Germany and are not buying more of them.

https://www.popsci.com/technology/hydrogen-train-germany/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do battery operated work? Are they short rage trains? Or do they have like a car full of batteries? And how do recharge times work? Can they recharge just in the stations? If it works for them, great. And it sounds like it is. It just seemed like there were several problems.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Battery locomotives don't have enough range to be useful solo, but they're a handy to add on to an existing train to give it regenerative braking and improve it's efficiency.

You want practically zero emissions train, you build overhead catenary wires. But that's decades old tech that just works, it's not sexy futuristic stuff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Hear me out… SOLAR FREAKIN RAILWAYS

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was saying it seems to make sense to use hydrogen as an intermediate step before you can put in all the infrastructure for overhead wires. If Germany is just using electric engines plus diesel engines now, instead of hydrogen engines, then there's still emitting a whole lot more than they would otherwise. Even if it is cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's no way Hydrogen in Germany would be more green than diesel. It'd just be greenwashing. You'd need to make electricity to make hydrogen, store it and transport it, then turn it back into electricity (that's how a hydrogen engine works, not by burning it). In the mean time, Germany is increasing it's production of dirty energy, so the hydrogen production would have to be done with dirty energy. There's no way that process is more efficient than just using diesel directly.

It might be better somewhere else, but not in Germany.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You don't need to use the standard grid energy. You can use off peak power rates in areas with a lot of wind, so it'd use the otherwise unusable energy. Or you could disconnect from the grid entirely. But the power source is absolutely a concern.

What would the co2 trade off look like between diesel and hydrogen? Diesel you'd have a constant co2 per mile, whereas hydrogen would have higher kwh efficiency, but high conversion inefficiency, then some percentage of the energy emits co2 at a certain rate. I don't have time to crunch the numbers now, but I would be surprised if hydrogen was more ghg intensive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or you could disconnect from the grid entirely.

The off peak usage, sure. This though? How would that be green? You could spend the same money to install solar, wind, whatever and take dirty energy off the grid. That's the point is you need to use energy to make it, when instead that energy could remove dirty energy. It's greenwashing. It's not removing demand for dirty energy, its just increasing overall energy demand.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Increasing energy use compared to diesel? If you count the energy in the diesel, I'm pretty sure hydrogen would use less. But I think what matters over all is the total co2 emitted per mile, including generation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I don't know, have you seen those wires above the rails? They always look sexy and futuristic to me, especially the high speed rail ones 🥵

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Irish Rail is trying this. There was an article posted about it yesterday!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Other than ideas like synfuels, it is the only thing that makes sense for cars. People are just falling prey to BEV propaganda. You don't want unsustainable mining and a >400kg battery pack in every car. It is the big act of greenwashing today, and green transportation won't happen until BEVs are abandoned or scaled way back.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unsustainable from a co2 standpoint, ecological damage, or human rights and damage standpoint? I think we're probably thinking about different sorts of sustainability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you mean the cost of battery mining/production, it's all three. We currently can't even make batteries without vast amounts of fossil fuels. And due to many factors like long-duration energy storage problems, BEVs can't reach net zero without hydrogen anyways.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm from Denmark and I've never even heard there were Hydrogen cars around here.

Edit: but then again, I don't drive a car, so maybe Im just not the target audience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Big L for them.