Reply to post: Try it with some numbers

Want to see the back of fossil fuels? Calm down, hippies. CAPITALISM has an answer

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Try it with some numbers

Lets start with solar power: about 1.4kWatt/m². Half the time there is a planet in the way, and it you do not live on the moon, there is an atmosphere with clouds. That trims the power available to 100Watt/m² in the UK. You can bump that up a bit if you angle your solar panels towards the sun. If you spin them once per day, you can have 200Watt/m². (Source: Sustainable energy without hot air.). I will use 100Watt/m², so you can multiply it by the area of your home without having to think about the angle of your roof.

A small car can go about 17km with a litre of petrol (For example: Nissan Micra). Wakipedia has figures for the energy density of fuels. Petrol is 32.4MJoules/litre, so I can go 523m with 1MJ of petrol. 1MJ of hydrogen should take me about the same distance. Each square metre of land gives me on average 100x60x60x24=8640000J per day of solar energy. Converting to hydrogen is 12.3% efficient, so I can go about ½ km per day for each square metre of roof.

If I covered 5 by 6 paces of roof with solar→hydrogen panels I would get enough hydrogen for my transport. Someone else in the house could sensibly run a car too, but a third driver requires covering the garden.

Remember: solar power costs the most lives per mega Watt of installed capacity because DIY installers fall of the roof. Hydrogen/Air mixtures are really good at going bang. Test you hydrogen leak detectors regularly.

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