Electrolysis + fuel cell as ultimate battery.

 I've been visiting and scanning this group for a couple years now, and
haven't run across any thing about electrolysing water when there is excess
power from from PV and wind generation systems. I think this may be a very
effective high-return form of storage even if you just store the H2 and O2
in membranes and burn it, perhaps use it for welding, or ultimately for
powering a fuel-cell, (I don't know if there are any consumer priced fuel
cells available yet. I imagine that an electrolysis cell would be fairly
easy to make for a home tinkerer, but a fuel-cell would have to be
commercially produced, but the thought almost inlimited storage seems quite
exciting- I realise thought that storing hydrogen in a bag could be
dangerous and that compression introduces a whole new level of cost, but
still it seems like the best way to save summer sun for a rainy day. PS. You
could fill your zeppelin go cruising and then turn it into home power,
(don't take the kids)

  Pike wrote:

Well, if you have been reading this group for a while then you know that
PV is one of the very most expensive ways to generate electricity there
is. Wind is better but at the home size it's still expensive.

Since these forms of generating electricity are so expensive, it turns
out that people rarely buy more than they need. Some systems are even
designed with a gas/diesel/veggie-oil generator to produce enough energy
for periodic shortfalls.

So what do people do with their excess power? Well, most of them simply
don't have excess power. Others adjust their power use based on how much
they have. I.e. they weld during the summer and watch less TV in the
winter.

Have you looked at the numbers of how much H2/O2 you can generate from a
kWh of electricity? How much the equipment would cost? How much the tank
for storing it would cost? How much extra power a typical home-power
setup is going to be generating? Are you so sure it would be worth it?

Anthony

 You're points are well-taken but I still think that hydrogen is a good way
of storing volatile energy, It is presently a cheap commodity when extracted
from natural gas, but in closed systems, such as Nasa space vehicles,
hydrogen and fuel cells were the most elegant and efficient storage mediums
available. Now I realise that lifting lead acid batteries into earth orbit
would have been a ridiculous proposition, but now 40 years later I would
think that this technology is ripe for terrestrial use. I have assumed that
the conversion from electrical to hydrogen back to electrical is as least as
efficient as lead-acid storage and I'm looking forward to any further
insights.

 Pike wrote:

Well, my points were simple. It's possible but very, very expensive.
How expensive? How efficient? I don't know. I haven't done the numbers.
I suspect that it's so expensive and that only folks like NASA can
afford to play with the technology.

It may be lots cheaper simply to buy more lead acid batteries.

Anthony

 Anthony, GM and Daimler-Chrysler are furiously working on fuel-cell powered
cars , Even laptop makers are experimenting with methanol-fed fuel cell
batteries, but if so resigned to lead-acid. Well, then have fun.


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