Hydrogen Powered Scottish Ferry

[Alan de Enfield]

Will Scotland build a hydrogen-powered ship? - BBC News

 

Green hydrogen from surplus electricity generation

 

 

 

 

HySeas III, the project's latest incarnation, has a very specific goal - to build a small, double-ended vessel to transport passengers and cars on a 25-minute route between Kirkwall and Shapinsay in Orkney.

Orkney was chosen for a reason. The island community, just north of the Scottish mainland, is a world leader in pioneering a hydrogen economy.

 

The islands have far more wind and tidal energy than they need for domestic electricity consumption but the National Grid cannot always handle the surplus.

Rather than shutting the wind turbines down for periods, they are instead being used for electrolysis, splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.

 

That "green hydrogen" can then be used to generate electricity when required using something called a hydrogen fuel cell.

Already fuel cells are powering a small fleet of council vans, heating buildings and providing electricity to ships moored in Kirkwall harbour. For a community that relies so much on boats to get around the obvious next step is ferries.

[IanD]

23 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Will Scotland build a hydrogen-powered ship? - BBC News

 

Green hydrogen from surplus electricity generation

 

 

 

 

HySeas III, the project's latest incarnation, has a very specific goal - to build a small, double-ended vessel to transport passengers and cars on a 25-minute route between Kirkwall and Shapinsay in Orkney.

Orkney was chosen for a reason. The island community, just north of the Scottish mainland, is a world leader in pioneering a hydrogen economy.

 

The islands have far more wind and tidal energy than they need for domestic electricity consumption but the National Grid cannot always handle the surplus.

Rather than shutting the wind turbines down for periods, they are instead being used for electrolysis, splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.

 

That "green hydrogen" can then be used to generate electricity when required using something called a hydrogen fuel cell.

Already fuel cells are powering a small fleet of council vans, heating buildings and providing electricity to ships moored in Kirkwall harbour. For a community that relies so much on boats to get around the obvious next step is ferries.

 

All true -- but the Orkneys are very much a special (and small-scale) case, as explained in the text.

 

This in no way makes "green hydrogen" a viable solution for large-scale transport applications where these special circumstances (genuinely free renewable energy) don't apply -- which is pretty much all of them... 😉

[Jen-in-Wellies]

The wrong forum, but using the Hydrogen as lift gas and propeller fuel for Orkney airships would be much more cool! 😀

[George and Dragon]

Funnily enough I didn't see the post where someone extrapolated from a specific small scale use case to a global hydrogen based transport economy.

Has it been deleted?

[IanD]

4 minutes ago, George and Dragon said:

Funnily enough I didn't see the post where someone extrapolated from a specific small scale use case to a global hydrogen based transport economy.

Has it been deleted?

 

No, but many posts about "green hydrogen" (not this one) ignore the elephant in the room which is that it only works if there is an excess of renewable energy which would otherwise be wasted -- which is rarely the case, and never for large-scale applications which is what are needed to reduce global emissions.

 

They often hold out the false hope that we can somehow keep our existing lifestyle and fossil-fuel infrastructure by switching to hydrogen, and are often promoted by interests backed by the fossil fuel industry or people who are basically anti-EV.

 

If you search back through the forum and see who repeatedly makes posts promoting hydrogen and against EVs, you can draw your own conclusions about which category the OP falls into... 😉