Energy self-sufficient Danish community makes hydrogen using wind power
Who woulda thunk that the first hydrogen-powered community would be Vestenskov, Denmark? In the next couple years, that will be a reality, as the Lolland Hydrogen Community will be installing Micro Combined Heat and Power stations in 35 homes.In Nakskov, an island of Lolland, their main power source is generated by wind power, and using that renewable source of energy, they generate 50 percent more power than they use. The excess power is going to be routed into electrolysis to make hydrogen fuel cells. While electrolysis is a very inefficient energy conversion method, using a renewable energy source negates the issue. To make the process more efficient, the oxygen split off from the hydrogen in the electrolysis process will be sent to the municipal water treatment facility to speed up their biological processes.
This project is made possible by a joint partnership between IRD Fuel Cells, Baltic Sea Solutions, the Municipality of Lolland, and funding from the Danish Energy Authority. So how does it feel to be shown up by the little guys?
[Source: Baltic Sea Solutions via RenewableEnergyAccess.com]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
A.Brien 8:10PM (6/12/2007)
This is the best idea i heard from a long time.
Wind power is unlimited energy and to convert the excess electricity in hydrogen for later on is the best thing. No pollution at all, almost 100% efficient once the machinery is in place.
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susan.kraemer 9:03PM (6/12/2007)
We have a bill in the Senate now that would expand our wind powerbut as usual the cronies of dirty power are trying to destroy it:
You should contact your Senator to protect the strong and clean standard contained in Senator Bingaman's original bill by opposing any amendments that would include nuclear, coal, and other dirty, non-renewable energy sources.
I told my Senator there's problems she needs to fix in this:
1. PLEASE DO NOT let them include existing nuclear plants as "new, renewables". Renewable DOES NOT include nuclear, (especially existing nuclear plants!)
2. PLEASE DO NOT give utilities credit for installing BUT NOT ACTUALLY using carbon capture technology.
3. PLEASE DO NOT let this corrupt administration's Secretary of Energy (Bodman!) decide as to what other "clean" energy sources might be: he will just pick the twice as dirty ones like Synfuels, and you know it! (119% MORE carbon than gasoline!)
4. It is just too vague to let states not participate in the federal standard if their standards are "comparable" without defining what that means.
Contact your Senator (find which at www.congress.org) to lead them to where Democracies like Denmark go: to rational, smart decisions!
Lets take back this country!
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susan.kraemer 9:08PM (6/12/2007)
The Bingaman bill is the
National Renewble Portfolio Standard:
It is designed to get utilities to buy AT LEAST 15% of their energy from green sources like wind, solar, ocean, hydroelectric and geothermal sources by 2015 and to go up steadily from then on. It is very do-able. California and some other states are already this clean and getting cleaner.
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Chris M 9:41PM (6/12/2007)
Sorry, A.Brien, but wind power is not unlimited. It may be able to supply a substantial portion of our energy needs, but not if we waste it.
H2 is nowhere near 100% efficient. Water electrolysis is 60% efficient, PEM fuel cells 50%, overall 30% - and that isn't counting the energy needed to compress or liquify H2 for storage.
This is a showcase project in a tiny community (35 houses!), and almost completely subsidized by government agencies. Going by figures for similar projects elsewhere, I'd estimate about a quarter million euros per house. The general public could never afford such extravagance on their own.
Using lead acid storage batteries, or even LiIon batteries, would be more compact, much less expensive, and far more efficient (85% vs 30%).
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Val 5:00AM (6/13/2007)
I think until there is a cheaper and more effcient way to make hydrogen than hydrolisis, energy shouldn't be wasted in large scale projects. 35 homes is not a big deal, but Denmark is a really windy place, and as mentioned, the windurbines are mostly paid for by government agencies.
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Fabio 5:40AM (6/13/2007)
Rather than converting electricity in hydrogen, wasting the large majority of the energy in the process, why not store that excess energy in batteries, flywheels or compressed air? The efficiency would be way better!
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Nils 6:39AM (6/13/2007)
Not so for compressed air, but batteries definitely. They should have tried vanadium-flow batteries, relatively cheap and enormous, easily expandable capacity. They were developed for this kind of applications.
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Tim 9:11AM (6/13/2007)
NO matter how you calculate it, Hydrrogen is a waste of energy unless you're in space, have the hydrogen and oxygen onboard for thrust anyway, need the water to drink and have virtually unlimited financial resourses and can print money like the gov't. Nils is spot on with the vanadium-flow batteries http://peswiki.com/index.php/PowerPedia:Vanadium_redox_batteries
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rick 9:13AM (6/13/2007)
AES the big electric utility bought into Altair Nanotechnologies because of reasons just like these. They believe that Battery Electric Vehicle with the Nanosafe battery is a slam dunk. Dr Gotcher at Altair also stated that the Nanosafe, even as an onboard battery, makes for great backup home power since it contains about 35X typical daily home needs. Why convert the electricity into H2 when you don't need to. I also further suspect the wind power needed to acomplish the exact same things in H2 vs Nanosafe batteries would require lots of extra wind capacity and that means total $$$$.
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Tim 9:37AM (6/13/2007)
rick- Although using NanoSafe for utility storage would help the economy of scale reduce the cost of the technology, there is still the relatively limited and no US "home grown" supply of Lithium to contend with. Gold may be the best conductor, but you wouldn’t want to use it in your home wiring.
This leads me to believe that we should save NanoSafe or other Lithium-Ion technologies for high density onboard storage and use vanadium-flow batteries for utility load leveling where space and energy density are less of a concern. Vanadium-flow batteries may be a safer and cheaper way to store electricity than any mechanical means such as flywheels or compressed air. In any case, almost anything is more efficient, safer and thus superior to the smallest know element that is Hydrogen.
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