Breakthrough Solar Panel Makes Hydrogen At Home!

hydrogen has been called the fuel of the future  for as long as I can remember and for good reason   it's incredibly abundant and energy dense but  it's also a huge challenge to store and produce   that's why I was so excited by a company producing  a solar hydrogen panel producing hydrogen in your   home charge your future hydrogen car to power your  house later well there's some challenges and some   pretty Innovative breakthroughs here so let's talk  about this today I'm Ricky and this Two Bit da Vinci this video is sponsored by Hoy miles hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and it's also the second most energy dense fuel behind  nuclear power every kilogram of hydrogen contains   33.3 kilode hours of energy that's a hundred  times better than Tesla's best batteries and   70 times greater than the current record holding  battery from amperous technology we could pack   the same amount of energy in Tesla's model y a  1700 pound battery pack into just 15 pounds of   hydrogen saving 1685 pounds minus the weight of  the storage system but there's a catch we can't   find the hydrogen in nature because it's clingy  and likes to stick to other elements Like Oxygen   so producing those 15 pounds of hydrogen requires  putting in a lot of energy to pry it apart also   being the smallest element and a gas it has a  very low energy density at room temperatures   and pressures those 15 pounds I was talking about  would occupy a volume of 3 000 cubic feet that's a   cube 14 feet by 14 feet by 14 feet roughly a very  large room with high ceilings this means that we   need to compress it down to very high pressures  or cool it down to below negative 253 degrees   Celsius to liquefy the hydrogen gas or combine  it with other elements again to make it fit in   a smaller space finally storing and moving this  high pressure gas or cryogenic looking around is   very hard and expensive too and acquires costly  equipment this is in essence hydrogen's biggest   problem cost the cost to produce it the cost  to compress it store it move it and use it   this is why we don't see hydrogen lines coming  from utilities feeding our homes it's also why   hydrogen cars haven't really made any Headway  against battery powered EVs and that's exactly   what a company from Belgium called solheid is  trying to solve but before we get into that   let's talk about our sponsor this week Hoy miles  my solar system is finally approved and running   and I'm officially producing clean energy for  our house and office it feels so good knowing our   crazy high energy bills are behind us koi miles  makes some world-class micro inverters the part   that takes DC from your solar panels and inverts  it to AC for your house the hardware is Top Notch   offers super high efficiency and comes with an  amazing warranty but the magic that makes Hawaii   miles so great is that you get all the benefits  of panel by panel production at an amazing price   with their two to one or four to one inverter you  can plug in two or four panels into one inverter   and get all those micro inverter benefits while  paying a fraction of the cost I'm always looking   for ways to make solar more affordable for more  people and Hoy miles is my go-to recommendation   for inverters and why I have them installed  in my house so if you're an installer or a   homeowner you gotta check out high miles you'll  be glad you did links in the description huge   thanks to high miles and you for supporting the  show so the First Technology we're going to talk   about today is solar hydrogen panels AKA still  hide this is an all-in-one solar panel and water   vapor electrolyzer that can produce hydrogen  gas directly from water vapor in the air using   only solar energy this panel was developed by a  group of researchers at KU Leven in in Belgium led   by Dr Jean Runge the team founded a spin-off  company called soulhide to commercialize the   panels they've been working on since 2010. they  made the headlines recently when they partnered   with komate a Belgium Hardware startup incubator  announced that they could hit commercial scale as   early as 2026 that's just a couple of years away  but I bet you're wondering what makes this panel   special and how does it work it's actually pretty  simple the hydrogen panel is made up of two parts   one a standard PV panel on top that converts solar  energy into electricity just like we've always   done and two a very special type of electrolyzer  that uses electricity to split water into hydrogen   and oxygen the oxygen is released into the air and  the hydrogen is collected in a series of tubes and   it's piped into your house so instead of having a  series of wires coming out of the panels feeding   electrical panel you'd have pipes running hydrogen  gas I could go wrong once we get to the hydrogen   we can put it through a fuel cell to generate  electricity and we could in principle use it to   fill up our hydrogen in cars I know what you're  thinking hydrogen cars seriously yeah seriously   there are many who consider hydrogen will be  the energy source of the future the Japanese   included if you don't believe me you should check  out our video that was wildly popular on Japan's   red hydrogen plans linked below there's even talk  about Tesla switching to Hydra in 2024. now I'm   just I'm just kidding that is a Elon Musk special  April Fool's Day joke but either way hydrogen   may be the only economical way to decarbonize  many critical Industries like steel and cement   Toyota is the world's biggest car manufacturer by  volume and they're also betting big on hydrogen   with their development into the hydrogen  combustion engine so this isn't a fuel cell   that takes hydrogen produce electricity to power  electric motors like the Mirai this is a hydrogen   combustion engine that would be like a direct  replacement for gasoline interesting we gotta do   a whole video on that later the only reason why we  don't see hydrogen cars here in the states is that   there simply aren't any hydrogen fueling stations  anywhere outside of California and Hawaii even   there they're few and far between but what if you  didn't need a hydrogen pumping station what if you   could produce all the hydrogen you needed at home  just as you could generate electricity and charge   your Ev today I gotta ask if you could refuel your  car at home in under four minutes and get 300 to   400 miles of range would you switch to a hydrogen  car even if there were no other pumping stations   around sound off in the comments below that's  a tricky one because that would mean you need   a second car for road trips and ah complicated  so a chord is so high the hydrogen panel is the   size of an average PV panel and can produce around  250 liters of hydrogen on average per day for an   overall efficiency of 15 percent we'll get back  to that in a minute the key to their technology   is their special electrolyzer which doesn't use  liquid water but takes water vapor from the air   this is something called direct air electrolysis  or Dae and it works efficiently even in bone dry   air with just four percent humidity only the  driest deserts in the world would be too dry   for Dae let's look at some of the other benefits  of the silhouide panel solheid made a point of   ensuring that their panels would be compatible  with normal PV panels and they fit on the same   standard PV mounting and racking this means you  could just swap an old panel and replace with   the still hide or you could even retrofit your  current panel with the electrolyzer this got me   thinking what exactly is the difference between  getting a soul hide panel and just keeping a   traditional solar panel and adding a third-party  hydrogen electrolyzer I'll get back to that in a   second because it's actually pretty important and  you'll want to stick around for my take on that   the second benefit is that this is an all-in-one  green hydrogen generation system that'll start   producing hydrogen the moment the Sun hits the  panel this is a lot easier to install and more   convenient than setting up separate panels and  electrolyzers so if you like all in one stuff   like an iMac you'll probably like this panel too  the average water electrolyzer has an efficiency   of around 80 percent while daes are much better  around 95 percent and more this means that 95   electricity generated by the solar panel on top  gets converted into hydrogen on the bottom that   is a huge breakthrough and really interesting but  for other benefits sohide panels are also pretty   flawed the most important problem I see with this  panel is that it doesn't come with the hardware   to a convert hydrogen back into electricity or  B Store hydrogen when you're not using it these   are two major obstacles you need a full cell  sorry a fuel cell to convert the hydrogen back   into water electricity this process only converts  about 40 percent of the energy in hydrogen into   electricity and the rest is released as heat this  is a horrible efficiency and it would make much   more sense to use that electrical energy directly  from the panel instead however if you use a heat   pump in a well-insulated house you can get that  up to around 90 thanks to the coefficient of   performance of heat pumps but again you probably  would be just better off storing it in a battery   there are several ways you can store hydrogen but  none of them are perfect the hydrogen produced is   low pressure so we have to either a compress  it and put into a canister at 100 to 200 bars   at ambient temperatures this requires using a  compressor which in turn requires energy and in   typical cases you can lose up to 20 percent of  the energy just from compressing it or B cool   it down to hydrogen's Boiling Point to store it  as a liquid this is even worse since it eats up   30 to 40 percent of the energy you're storing  additionally liquid hydrogen tends to boil off   in a small system like the one you would have at  your home you could easily lose up to 15 of your   stored hydrogen per day or C stored chemically  as ammonia hydrocarbons or as a metal hydride   this process requires complex catalysts and energy  both for storing and later using as hydrogen even   though these cons come mostly from hydrogen itself  and not from the panels there is one technology   I'll share with you in a minute that bypasses one  of the worst parts of the system that could really   change the game but before that let's talk money  so hide panels haven't hit the market yet and the   company hasn't set a price point it's pretty  clear however that they must be more expensive   than traditional panels since it's a normal panel  and a Dae unit but they did hint that the home   panels will be available by 2030 and that they  expect their cost to have every five years just   like normal solar panels have over the past few  decades and that by 2030 the soul height panels   would cost roughly what it costs for a panel  today that means that a soul hide panel would   cost approximately 300 in 2030 after decreasing  in price fifty percent every five years so do   the numbers solid panels today would cost roughly  800 each or almost three times as much as a normal   panel putting the price for the electoralizer  alone at around 500 assuming a 30-year lifespan   and a production of 250 liters of hydrogen per  day per panel this brings the cost of generating   green hydrogen at home to just three dollars and  fifty cents per kilogram in today's price this is   dirt cheap and a solheim's main selling point  that is almost a fourth of the current cost of   green hydrogen production at a large scale and  almost half the cost of gray hydrogen produced   from natural gas in Europe but by 2030 the cost  will be just one dollar 30 cents per kilogram   if the projections are right and this is even  cheaper than gray hydrogen produced in the US   from cheap fracked natural gas there are several  big ifs here and cost we didn't consider but the   fact that we can get even close to the same  ballpark as the cheapest dirtiest large-scale   hydrogen production methods are pretty amazing  especially considering this could happen on your   rooftop in a residential setting this means the  decentralization of green hydrogen generation no   more depending on large production plants and no  more distribution issues you could be producing   hydrogen at a residential scale at home for use  locally no distribution required but this still   doesn't answer a key question though why go for a  soul hide instead of a normal high quality solar   panel connected to an electrolyzer and I'll be  honest besides the convenience of having the   entire generation unit in a single neat package  I have trouble answering this question there are   companies like the Australian Lavo that offer  commercial hydrogen batteries designed to work   with solar power the key difference is that the  unit generates and also stores hydrogen as metal   hydride at room temperatures and pressure there  are commercial units store up to 40 kilowatt   hours worth of hydrogen and this has a round  trip efficiency of 50 percent this translates   into a real world energy storage capacity of  around 20 kilowatt hours after converting the   hydrogen back into electricity that said 20  is still about 50 percent more capacity than   a Tesla powerwall although the power wall is way  more efficient much higher closer to maybe 85 90   round trip as opposed to their 50 percent there's  another problem with hydrogen if the level costs   around twenty three thousand dollars or over twice  as much as a Powerball however but it does last 20   000 Cycles so if it does last the entire lifetime  of it it could potentially make sense because it   does last longer than a powerwall I think  for soul Hyde to truly make sense they have   to partner with a company that does the storage  and electricity production component like Lavo   does and if they can find the right partner  and bring this together and truly make it a   hands-off approach this could work especially  as they reach economies of scale solheid's key   Advantage is their direct air electrolyzer which  works very efficiently with water vapor in the   air but its key disadvantage is that the produced  hydrogen is really low pressure and low density   and it's really hard to store but there is another  technology breakthrough that I wanted to leave for   I'm talking about the high differential pressure  electrolyzer now that's a mouthful but it's   actually pretty simple it's a piece of equipment  that can break down water into hydrogen and oxygen   but that produces the hydrogen at high pressure  without any need for a compressor this means we   could store compressed hydrogen at home while  the panel is generating electricity and pump it   directly to our hydrogen car at home without any  additional Hardware which is awesome companies   like Honda have been using this technology for a  while now and they built their first working solar   hydrogen station all the way back in 2010 but with  little creativity companies like sawhide could   bring this technology to our homes at affordable  prices in the near future solving another one of   hydrogen's greatest challenges which was storage  in a nutshell whenever we make these kinds of   videos It's for a simple reason the future of  energy storage will come down to two competing   Technologies do we go hydrogen or do we go  batteries and there's pros and cons to both like   all things in engineering for example hydrogen is  just an abundant element in water vapor paper all   around us right now just a matter of collecting  it there's not as much mining required although   with batteries you need lithium you need iron you  need nickel you need Cobalt potentially although   increasingly less so but there is a mining  component involved but the battery's benefit   is way more efficient over 85 percent round-trip  efficiency compared to just 50 percent for the   hydrogen also there's other competing things  like how you get the electricity back out in   the case of hydrogen in your fuel cell those are  just less defined there's been less research and   development so how long will they last how finicky  can they be that's a big question whereas in the   world of batteries it's just an inverter and we've  been building inverters for a very long time and   these can easily last 10 or 20 years so ultimately  that is the battle and if you think that's crazy   you gotta watch this video next on Japan's plans  for red hydrogen production using nuclear power

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 154,243

Keywords: two bit da vinci, green hydrogen, hydrogen fuel cell, green hydrogen production, renewable energy, new hydrogen breakthrough, hydrogen breakthrough, solar power, solar panels for home, solar energy, hydrogen fuel, solhyd hydrogen panels, solhyd, hydrogen solar panel, solar hydrogen, hydrogen for home, hydrogen, hydrogen solar, hydrogen production, hydrogen electrolysis, solar hydrogen generator, hydrogen panel, hydrogen panels, Breakthrough Solar Panel Makes Hydrogen At Home

Id: rbpI4FHnYr8

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023