Hydrogen through solar and wind sources?

Question

What do you think of hydrogen being produced through wind turbines and solar panels? I think it has a long way to go, but shows a lot of promise.

Answer 1

I think you mean energy produced via Wind turbines and solar panels.

Hydrogen is not produced by anything since the big bang.

Do you mean Hydrogen Fusion as an energy source?

That has an awesome future potential for environmentally sound and renewable energy production.

But that's about another twenty or more years away from commercial development.

Answer 2

It will never happen to mass appeal. There is no way that wind turbines will produce enough power to fuel the country. There are a lot environmental concerns reagrding wind turbines. First, they don't look so great, second they kill the bird population. Most important, since one tower can't produce that much power, they need to have many towers, probably a million just to produce enough electricity to fuel a small city. So imagine how many turbines it would take to supply North Eastern US where the majority of power consumption takes place. They would take up so much property thus causing deforestation in serveral areas. In the end it's not cost efficient because you'll have to run a subsidary source so that one has enough power.

Solar panels has the same issue. They only absorb so much energy that can be converted into usable energy. They take up a lot of space and are appealing to the eye either. There are other ways to produce energy. Wind and Solar are used as a compliment to Nuclear and Hydro. There is no way Wind or Solar can produce the amout of wattage hydro can. There is not much promise at all in this area. If there were, then most countries would of adopted this method. Solar and Wind have been used for 20 years now. If it were totally effective, then that is what the whole world would be using but as you can see, the effectiveness is feeble.

Answer 3

first ... the original energy produced through wind turbines and solar panels is electricity, so a battery makes sense to store that in till it is needed. The new lithium-ion batteries are promising to be great at this when their price drops.

second ... making hydrogen (presumably from water by electrolysis) is still not the most cost effective way to go. Hydrogen from coal is still way cheaper.

Answer 4

I don't think it's going to be practical in the near future. Hydrogen seperation is an extremely energy intensive process. You need a huge volume of land for solar/wind power on that scale and its just not economical. While 'off the grid' power communities are becoming more popular a single family house alternative energy system can cost $50-100,000 and that's barely a fraction of the energy needed for hydrogen extraction.