Comments on: Long Island Town Pioneers Closed-Loop, Pollution-Free Wind Power-Hydrogen Fuel System

By: dcmeserve

dcmeserve — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:29:00 +0000

I saw that same “MW per year” mistake in the other copies of this story around the web, so I don’t blame you. It’s the original writers, who were apparently part of the town. And I’m sorry if my “minds” comment was written too lazily to make it clear that I was talking only about the actual decision-makers, not the news-relayers.

And thank you for the link to the source — though it’s actually second-hand (see the bottom of that page).

“You assume that the entire grant went to this one project, which is not the case.”

True. From the IREC page, I see:

“In addition to the wind turbine, U.S. Department of Energy grant funding is being used to finance the construction of a 60K solar field, two solar trackers (solar panels which follow the path of the sun), a solar-powered carport and a geothermal energy project that will address heating and cooling needs at the town’s Conservation and Waterways facility.”

So we don’t know how much was spent on the hydrogen component of their infrastructure. But I’m quite sure that they could have bought quite a few LEAF cars for the same cost as that infrastructure + vehicles. Though perhaps not a bus…

By: Akbweb2

Akbweb2 — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:31:00 +0000

Apologies for not catching the 180MW per year mistake…

Otherwise, this is a brief news post with clear reference to an original, first-hand source; it’s not intended to be a thorough investigation…

You assume that the entire grant went to this one project, which is not the case…

By: John Bailo

John Bailo — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:53:00 +0000

This is fantastic. Closed loop shows the metrics of being 100% CO free! However, the beauty is as a kernel for building a true Hydro-grid and 21st century economy based on hydrogen as a fuel!

By: dcmeserve

dcmeserve — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:13:00 +0000

Oh, also it’s a *single* refueling point, right next to the wind turbine.

By the way, for comparison, with the remaining $3.8 million of their grant (after the turbine costs listed above), they could have theoretically bought over 100 Nissan LEAFs, in place of this H2 stuff.

By: dcmeserve

dcmeserve — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:56:00 +0000

Found my way to the town’s own posting. It really *is* a single bus and a couple of passenger vehicles. Also, they make the same “180 MW per year” mistake that appears in this and other cut-and-paste articles. Seems to fit — the same minds that are so unclear on the topic that they would say “megawatts per year” would also be the ones who still think an H2 infrastructure is the wave of the future. And willing to invest their town’s precious resources into it.

By: dcmeserve

dcmeserve — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:28:00 +0000

Pretty unclear article. How many H2 cars/buses are in their “fleet”? To be supplied by a 100kw turbine — would that be 1 bus and 2 cars? What’s the range of these cars? How much do they cost? How many refueling points are there? What was the rest of the $4.6 million grant used for? What is the efficiency of their H2 system (I’d expect 50% loss in the electrolysis, some other huge loss when transferring the H2 from storage tanks to vehicles, another 50% loss in the vehicles’ fuel cells, …)?

By: larry giglio

larry giglio — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:00:00 +0000

hello. not feeling bad about them incorporating my concept. the need to involve other entities diminishes as you apply hydrogen directly to an electrical generator.

By: Muchos Huevos

Muchos Huevos — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:09:00 +0000

I can hardly wait for all of this projects be operating, so we could gain independance from oil, coal and other poluting products, and for ethanol, I hope they stop using food products to make it, due to drought ans too mush water, worldwide, we may be about to see chortages of corn and other foods.
Just hope for clean energy be implementer on cars also.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:07:00 +0000

Hmm, the link’s broken.