His energy bill is $0

March 16, 2007 8:59 AM

Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. "The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days. Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates."
posted by mr_crash_davis (28 comments total)

Pretty nifty, but half a million bucks will buy you a hell of a solar array and probably a great wind turbine to boot.
posted by cog_nate at 9:06 AM on March 16, 2007

Look what this guy did for $50,000. (1st article. There's a link to a site about the house in the article,too.)
posted by Benny Andajetz at 9:19 AM on March 16, 2007

Half a million bucks for the first one.
posted by DU at 9:29 AM on March 16, 2007

I love this stuff and normally really hate when someone stops by just to say how "impractical" and "not ready for prime time" these things are (like the guy says, nothing is as expensive as destroying the planet). BUT, I notice they don't say what the range of his car is.

The hydrogen generation he's doing seems like it's just a gimmick. Instead of storing the excess electricity in hydrogen tanks, he could have just stored it in a regular battery. The only reason for the hydrogen that I can see is that it makes powering the car a little easier. But unless there's been a breakthrough in the last couple years that I haven't heard about (very possible), there's no way he's able to carry more than a couple dozen miles worth of hydrogen in his car.

I think "Romm"'s point about putting the excess out onto the grid is a good point. Rather than wasting 50% of the electricity in conversion for running your car, sell 100% of the excess to other people and take the profit to the gas station.
posted by DU at 9:36 AM on March 16, 2007

Somebody should remind this guy that alternative power just isn't practical.
posted by Sukiari at 9:49 AM on March 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

I think one point overlooked by the nay-sayers in the article is the fact that Strizki has a working proof-of-concept. Sure it's expensive, frought with inefficiencies and not viable for mainstream (or even limited) production. But it works. The looming "energy crisis" won't be solved by a silver-bullet, end-all-be-all magic technology. I think demonstrations like this are inspiring as well as validating.

Thanks for the link. I haven't read CS Monitor in a long time and often forget what a good paper it can be.
posted by slogger at 9:50 AM on March 16, 2007

The hydrogen generation he's doing seems like it's just a gimmick. Instead of storing the excess electricity in hydrogen tanks, he could have just stored it in a regular battery.

No kidding. Obviously he's going to be able to store a lot more energy, but the losses to inneficency must be staggering. What about using a magnetic flywheel or compressed air?

On the other hand, generating hydrogen to power a car would give him better range then generating electricity for an electric car. The range on hydrogen cars isn't that bad, from what I understand. The range on the Honda FCX Has a range of 190 miles. If I'm not mistaken, most electrics only go about 100 miles.
posted by delmoi at 9:53 AM on March 16, 2007

Actually, his energy bill is $500,000, optimistically every 40 years or so. Which would make it about a thousand bucks a month. Ignoring, if course, that it's $500,000 up front, and not accounting for lost interest.

But he estimates it could be done for $130,000 - I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, so that takes his bill down under $300 a month.

Why make such a big deal about the cost? A lot of that cost is being spent on burning fossil fuels, somewhere in the manufacturing cost, for one thing.

I'm with Romm on this one - please let's not have hydrogen be the future. Is it the automakers that are pushing it so hard? To me any serious medium- or long-range plan (50 years plus) that puts individual full-sized car use at the center is fatally flawed.

I can imagine hydrogen being in the auto industry's best interest, since having the energy economy built around a highly-portable, high-energy-density fuel is a requirement for its survival, but I can't see it being in anyone else's.
posted by pinespree at 9:57 AM on March 16, 2007

btw i'm not hating on mr. strizki - he's an innovator and a proof of concept guy, and he did something cool working within the constraints of present-day new jersey (although the puget sound guy seems to have done it pretty well, too). i'm just not a hydrogen fan.
posted by pinespree at 10:00 AM on March 16, 2007

storing electricity in hydrogen fuel tanks is *so* a gimmick. You'd be better off (efficiency wise) in a decent battery system. But what would be even better is to not have that excess production in the first place, i.e. to have a system that is load-balanced across at least the local grid.

there is something about the libertarian idea of self-sufficiency is the whole solar-power investment bubble.

For alot of isolated places it is a great technology, but like, say "BioFuels", the devil is in what happens when *everyone* uses or would have to use the technology. Just like everyone can't serve Metafilter from their home cable-modem, the grid can't work based on small amounts of power generated evenly across the network.

There is this idea that we can just plug in new technology X into our current lifestyle in the US and everything will work out just fine. Eventually, one way or another, we (outside of executive communities in the Puget Sound) will find ourselves living fairly communally forced to share relatively scardce resources and be accountable to our neighboors for how much we use: the suburban ideal of the rugged individual in their technologically advanced stand-alone-home is an artifact of cheap petroleum

(and I'm not advancing any Peak Oil conspiracy here I think it's just a plain fact that cheap petroleum is a historical coincidence not a law of nature and will eventually run out.)

my point is that inside these technologies there is this kernel of an idea that energy use is individualized when really the use of an energy source is a collective act.
posted by geos at 10:02 AM on March 16, 2007 [2 favorites]

Actually, his energy bill is $500,000...

If oil apologists can argue that the only cost to the consumer for a gallon of gas is the $2.50 they pay at the pump, then this guy is perfectly entitled to saying his energy bill is $0.
posted by DU at 10:18 AM on March 16, 2007 [2 favorites]

If oil apologists can argue that the only cost to the consumer for a gallon of gas is the $2.50 they pay at the pump, then this guy is perfectly entitled to saying his energy bill is $0.

I agree, when he's talking to an oil apologist. But I'm not an oil apologist. :)

I'm not going to argue hydrogen vs. oil, because that's not really the way I think (and it's apples vs. oranges diamonds - we could inefficiently make hydrogen forever, but oil is finite). My approach to the issue is to try to use as little energy as possible. I'm sure the energy system could have been built for a lot less than $500,000 if it had been built to deliver a smaller amount of power (smaller tv, smaller hot tub, shorter commute, etc etc).

I think going into changing our energy sources with that "no compromise" mentality is harmful; it's going to be a lot easier to make renewable energy work if we don't need so much of it. Of course, changing mindsets is going to take generations, but I think it's about time to start.
posted by pinespree at 10:33 AM on March 16, 2007

storing electricity in hydrogen fuel tanks is *so* a gimmick. You'd be better off (efficiency wise) in a decent battery system.

Maybe not. Converting to chemical energy and back is also pretty inefficient, batteries are not environmentally friendly and not nearly as portable, durably and easily stored for long periods as is hydrogen.

Ever heard of "pumped storage units"? Some utilities use excess electricity (generated at night or during other off hour demands) and pump water up to a reservoir for later generation. Sound inefficient? It is, except it helps meet peak demand hours while putting off-peak production to some use. (There are minumum generation levels for utilities that make off-peak surpluses a reality)

Now let's apply that to hydrogen generation instead of pumped storage. We then have excess energy stored in the form of hydrogen (which is simply a medium for power storage, not creation.)

Now I'm all for replacing trucks and cars whenever possible with trains, etc. but the fact is there are circumstances where such modes must continue to exist, so how to fuel them? Hydrogen!
posted by nofundy at 10:55 AM on March 16, 2007

My approach to the issue is to try to use as little energy as possible.

What issue is that? Global Warming, or something else? Obviously there is no practical limit to the amount of energy we use if the energy comes from sources that do not produce greenhouse gasses.
posted by delmoi at 11:19 AM on March 16, 2007

Maybe not. Converting to chemical energy and back is also pretty inefficient, batteries are not environmentally friendly and not nearly as portable, durably and easily stored for long periods as is hydrogen.

How is hydrogen easy to store for long periods of time? The atoms leak out of the containers.
posted by delmoi at 11:20 AM on March 16, 2007

Ever heard of "pumped storage units"? Some utilities use excess electricity (generated at night or during other off hour demands) and pump water up to a reservoir for later generation. Sound inefficient? It is, except it helps meet peak demand hours while putting off-peak production to some use. (There are minumum generation levels for utilities that make off-peak surpluses a reality)


it's only economically efficient and is a product of two basic structural inefficiencies:

coal-fired power plants which are expensive to turn off when power isn't needed (say at night)

a system of energy production which has the above over-production built into it.

(I actually live right below a pump-storage facility)

pump-storage is a perfect example of how inefficient our energy production system is i.e. it makes economic sense to do something useless like pump water up a hill with excess electricity rather than either not produce or use that production where it is needed.
posted by geos at 11:46 AM on March 16, 2007

Tank hydrogen storage is much cheaper and more durable for the kind of storage in TFA. He's not just storing energy for the night -- he's storing it for the winter. Yes hydrogen leaks a bit, but not as much as batteries do. And building the tanks is much more eco-friendly than building batteries, and the tanks will last longer in use.

Batteries need to be replaced every so many years; the tanks will last for decades. Plus you can't pump the stuff from your battery into your car to drive it.

There are big problems with just selling the electricity back to the utility. Like what happens to the electric grid's stability when a cloud blocks a whole bunch of those solar panels at the same time. Yes, it's a more efficient use of the energy in the short term, but this project is obviously about proving long-term practicality.

I find the amount of ragging on this strange. Yes it's a proof of concept and so very expensive and a little kludgey and maybe he should have bolted on this or that or tried reducing his energy usage to simplify the system. But what he's proving is that it is possible to support that extravagant US style lifestyle that some people are so afraid of losing without relying on oil at all.

As for TFA quoting the guy about practical hydrogen coming from dirty sources -- so what? This project has nothing to do with current usage patterns for hydrogen, and that shouldn't even have been included in the article.
posted by localroger at 12:34 PM on March 16, 2007

Great post!

The debate about energy policy (among liberals, but largely outside Metafilter) sometimes comes down to this false disagreement: Should we (1) change our lives and attitudes to reduce usage of energy or (2) innovate our way out of the hole by developing alternate forms of renewable, non-polluting energy.

A couple of observations: First, it seems that these two options are largely compatible, and that people should put their efforts into the option that most appeals to them. We'll need both in the end.

Second, the debate isn't primarily about energy per se, but about economic costs and theories of persuasion. It currently costs much less to reduce a unit of non-renewable energy than to produce a unit of renewable energy. So at this moment we should focus on conservation to a greater extent than innovation, right? But it is so hard for any of us to change our habits, especially when the argument to do so is coming from somebody fundamentally different from us. If anything, research shows that when confronted we get defensive, and more likely to hold onto our irrational and harmful beliefs. What I want to hear from those arguing for conservation first -- and I might count myself in that group in the near future -- is how to convince people fundamentally unlike us how to change their habits.

In short, it's not simply that our energy technology is underdeveloped, but that our understanding of motivation and persuasion is underdeveloped as well.
posted by ferdydurke at 12:39 PM on March 16, 2007

But what he's proving is that it is possible to support that extravagant US style lifestyle that some people are so afraid of losing without relying on oil at all.

exactly why i am critical of it. the whole point of the "hydrogen economy" is not to build a hydrogen economy but to convince people that they should just go on driving and buying and building subdivisions because some 'tech' genius is going to solve all of the increasingly obvious problems with building an entire society dependent upon cheap petroleum. it's wantonly irresponsible.

also, no one has noted the 10x1,000 'gallon' propane tanks filled with hydrogen on his property.
posted by geos at 12:49 PM on March 16, 2007

I'm with Romm on this one - please let's not have hydrogen be the future. Is it the automakers that are pushing it so hard?

Well, the oil companies have more than a lock on gasoline production; they also have a huge gasoline distribution system, from storage tanks to distribution hubs to trucks to filling stations. That's a huge investment in place, and while many things would need updating to make it a Hydrogen distribution system, they'd be in great shape to make those upgrades and transition over time as consumers purchased the vehicles and gas-burners fell by the wayside.

On the other hand, if you go the electric route, the oil companies have a huge distribution system for which demand will slowly fall -- and so for which the operating costs will slowly rise -- until it's no longer profitable to be in business. Meanwhile, the electric companies already have the distribution system for power.

So that's why it's being pushed so hard. Oil companies know that if the motive power bypasses fluid (or granules, or whatever) that must be physically delivered, they're going to suffer.
posted by davejay at 1:01 PM on March 16, 2007

Cool. Now all we need to do is populate the earth with 6.5 billion Millionaires and we're in the clear!
posted by sourwookie at 1:03 PM on March 16, 2007

Oh, and even if you ignore the connection between the current US administration and the oil companies, there are two other reasons for governments to prefer Hydrogen over Electric.

Reason one: taxes. Right now you can have much higher taxes on gasoline (as a consumer good) and much lower taxes on electricity (as a consumer need). When we go electric, it's much harder to differentiate (think two meters per house, which is pricey, and how do you enforce it?) so either taxes stay low for all electricity uses and revenue drops, or taxes go up for all electricity use, and voters get upset.

You're already seeing the government's tax-based dislike of electric/efficient cars in the response to hybrids: many places are considering per-mile taxes to address the loss caused by higher fuel mileage.

Reason two: the eventual unprofitability of gas-burning cars. As more people move to electric vehicles, gas will get more expensive, because the cost of the distribution network will get less efficient. Not only that, but eventually it won't be profitable to run the network at all, without charging painfully high prices -- but that point will be reached while those least able to afford new cars are still driving old gas-burners. So, big masses of poor people who can't afford to fill their cars, and can't afford to replace their cars. That makes for significant social unrest.

We saw this somewhat during the transition from leaded gas to unleaded, but that wasn't nearly as bad, since the distribution system could carry both types of gas without too much extra cost.
posted by davejay at 1:10 PM on March 16, 2007

The ingenuity demonstrated is cool, but whether or not the start up costs are reflected in clean or dirty power they need to be amortized across the life of the system to determine monthly energy cost. Pretty much anything you can do in the way of spending money uses energy somehow.

What makes this important is that he not only deployed a proof of concept, but that he is going to go on to use that expertise in his business, and approch mass production. If this was just one individual doing this who did not intend to plug what he'd learned back into innovating cheaper solutions it would have been a mistake.

New inverters have a 5-10% efficiency loss, lead-acid batteries lose 25-35%, which makes a battery back from 45-65% efficient. Considering the hydrogen car element, he probably went with the right technology (for off grid). He could always do a battery or flywheel & hydrogen system. In hot weather states with mandated power buyback it makes more sense to use a system tied in to the grid. Cloudy days often mean reduced AC use, and hence supply and demand are more in accordance than with conventional power plants.

I think the future of alternative transport should be roadways with overhead charging cables, or inductance charging beds underneath, and some kind of RFID stations to detect usage. That way you could have infinite range with very small battery banks, reducing the weight of the car.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:26 PM on March 16, 2007

There's something about the argument for enforcing conservation instead of a smoothing transitional technology like hydrogen that reminds me of people who want to eliminate abortion because pregnancy is a kind of punishment for sluts.

There's some segment of the population out there that seems absolutely giddy at the idea that when cheap energy finally becomes expensive enough, the economy will collapse and everybody will have to live the much simpler lives that the luddite crowd (for lack of a better description) just knows in their heart of hearts would be better or just more moral in some way.

The arguments or dreams or whatever just seem so similar to me, I wonder if these two groups understand how similar their thought processes are (even if they seem wildly different because the base assumptions are so different).
posted by willnot at 1:30 PM on March 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

geos, if those people who want the extravagant lifestyle are not convinced they can come along they will fight it tooth and nail, and it won't happen until much later than it could otherwise. That is why this is good. If you don't convince the ruling classes that you aren't out to sabotage their lifestyle, they will sabotage your proposals in self-defence.

Yes, it sucks. But so do a lot of things.

As for conversion efficiencies, those really don't matter much when the energy itself is limitless. So you have to build a 50% larger solar array -- whoop de doo. It's not like you're using 50% more of some non-renewable resource for every day of the rest of your life. In fact, the limited usage life of batteries make this a much better system than most others simply because batteries are the single largest expense in this kind of system.
posted by localroger at 1:55 PM on March 16, 2007

What issue is that? Global Warming, or something else? Obviously there is no practical limit to the amount of energy we use if the energy comes from sources that do not produce greenhouse gasses.

No, the issue of fossil fuel vs. renewable energy, and of the likely large rise in prices for oil-based fuels in the next decade or two. Related, but somewhat different.

Having read a few more comments about hydrogen (including davejay's, which were great), I can definitely see the appeal (not just to oil companies and governments, but as possibly the best tool for the job) as a method of energy transport and storage, at least for most of the rest of my life. Possibly even in a decentralized style like this.
posted by pinespree at 2:04 PM on March 16, 2007

Metafilter: a kind of punishment for sluts
posted by CynicalKnight at 2:52 PM on March 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is cool stuff (and a good discussion too), but the key thing to remember about this setup is that it won't scale up well to wider use.

Certainly some of what he's doing is worth looking into, though. I don't see too many reasons why every house shouldn't have some kind of solar energy capture, whether it be PV or passive solar heating.

The energy problems we have aren't likely to be solved by One Big Thing; it's much more likely that many different systems and methods will be applied to generate energy, with the types depending on local or regional factors (live near a river: small hydro; live in the desert: solar PV, etc.).

Another thing to remember: currently, production of solar PV cells is very environmentally unfriendly and consumes a lot of fossil-generated power. Just scaling that up will cause its own set of problems.
posted by zoogleplex at 4:49 PM on March 16, 2007