To the editor:
I'm writing about the City of Terrace's search for a hydrogen-fuel producing company who wants to open a facility at the Skeena Industrial Development Park south of the airport (The Terrace Standard, June 13, 2024)
I am a bit confused.
First, you need electricity to make hydrogen, that means losses in making it, more losses for storage, since it has a storage temperature of near
absolute zero - below minus 200 C - and because the molecules are so small they can even go through steel.
So my question is simple. With all those losses, would it not be easier and simpler just to use the electricity in the first place for any processes?
Plus how many hydrogen cars trucks, etc, are worldwide versus electric, and what happened to all the hydrogen buses that were used for the
2010 Olympics?
In the US in 2023, hydrogen vehicle sales were 3,143 versus 380,000
battery electric vehicles (BEVs). In 2022 worldwide sales of hydrogen vehicles were 70,200, and 28 million plugin ones.
The overall efficiency of electric 70 - 90 per cent but for hydrogen it is is 25 - 35 pr cent.
The costs for hydrogen are higher as well.
And if people have range anxiety for BEVs, hydrogen station are even rarer.
Martin Holzbauer,
Thornhill, B.C.
