I'm not sure if this is "good" or "bad" news - the return of steam for powering trains?
https://www.railwaygazette.com/uk/class-60-steam-loco-conversion-decision-expected-soon/68337.article?CMID=88A17C323-CMP264CON294-RCP2I48347O32&utm_campaign=RG-RBUK-RSSB%202025-270225-JM&utm_medium=email&utm_source=RGeditorial&utm_content=newsletter

[quote]Using hydrogen fueled boilers and high pressure turbines a claim is made that this will be more efficient and have a longer service life than fuel cells.
Time will tell.

Hah, the British class 60.... There had been efficient, modern electric locos in Britain (class 90) in the past. Train operators retired their electric cargo locos in Britain; and replaced them with Diesel because of insane electricity prices. The decades before they did everything to replace Diesel traction with much more efficient electric locos on al heavily utilized main lines; investing vast amounts (surely also taxpayers money) into overhead lines.

Btw. when did the marine industry replaced heavy or light oil fueled steam generators and steam turbines in all warships with gas turbines (and/or Diesel engines); except for the nuclear boilers in submarines (no oxygen needed) or aircraft carriers (no range limits; fuel logistics)? So, why did they do so? Efficiency and costs.

Instead of thinking about how to again replace modern, efficient Diesel engines (yes, the most efficient thermodynamic machine mankind ever invented), with hydrogen miracles... why don't these stubborn folks think about how to provide a whole, post-modern economy, let alone heavy cargo locomotives, with cheap electricity. The stupidity of this is just unbelievable.

You can also replace the wasteful water showers in public swimming pools and feed them with champagne to save up the precious drinking water. Doesn't need to be a brand name; just the 'cheap' stuff from industrial wine press houses (certified "organic", of course) from the Mediterranean, the Balkans... anyway... imported from somewhere, the cheapest supplier.

In essence, this is the proposal to generate steam with hydrogen. The same applies to steel production in blast furnaces. With hydrogen? Surely, it's possible... like champagne showers in public pools.

Thanks for very good comment there.

The biggest problem in the UK is unbelievably shoddy profiteering house building and the monopoly that is keeping ALL new housing hopelessly inefficient uncomfortably profitable shoddy.

We have a very long lingering proposal to double the power output of our largest pump-storage hydroelectric scheme in Scotland (Cruachan). However... Battery storage is already quickly taking over, at great cost to our Greenbelt land.

... And we still have to overcome the Fossil Fuels lobbying sabotaging the way to cheaper renewables.


All 'just' "business as usual"?

... And our only one world be damned!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

... why don't these stubborn folks think about how to provide a whole, post-modern economy, let alone heavy cargo locomotives, with cheap electricity. The stupidity of this is just unbelievable...

Yes, completely unbelievable...

Until...

You consider business practices for what is actually providing a public service... De-facto monopolies are very profitable in the short term...

That, and an anachronism of taxation, promoted a dash to using a very dirty fuel for the locomotives.


The "advanced steam turbine" might be workable. But using hydrogen there is very inefficient and wasteful. There is better existing clean tech.


Meanwhile, using hydrogen for steel production is a very good idea. But only if the hydrogen is cleanly acquired... (That is, by not burning oil to get that hydrogen.)


All a very dirty 'game' of business...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

A big problem in the UK is that the "designers" of heatpump installations assume temperature and humidity ranges that only account for "average" temperature and humidity ranges, which are basically spring through to autumn (temperature above 5C, humidity less than ~75%); ignoring that for about 4 months of the year we can expect temperatures regularly below 5C coupled with humidity above ~75%. The result is the external heat exchanger collects vast amounts of frost and stops working,which obviously means there is little or no heating available. One lazy solution is to embed electric heating into the system - need I say more.
It is possible to design a heat exchanger system that will work in the UK, but it is more expensive to produce, is less efficient when it gets hot (if it ever does in the UK...).
Years ago I was involved in a project to utilise heatpump heating and cooling, while the hardware was capable of doing the duty cycle on the bench the control system was far from perfect in the real world. Years of trial and error (more error than success) it was eventually made to work to the client's satisfaction, but the cost over-run would make Martin's eyes water.....

However, in Scandinavia they have designers who understand their climate, and despite enjoying/enduring much lower winter temperatures than the UK they also have a lower humidity, so have less heat-exchanger icing to contend with.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

... And we still have to overcome the Fossil Fuels lobbying sabotaging the way to cheaper renewables.

Cheaper renewables...

We already have overcome our fossil lobby, our domestic lignite and coal ones. These greedy dinosaurs were forced to sold their dirty business either to a Czech billionaire (who took the deal just because he could prevent debitable liabilities for recultivating the ultra-large open pit mines).

The domestic coal lobby separated and transfered their dirty business into a publicly owned foundation (of course transfering all liabilities and perpetual costs (water management; land subsidence) of ~150 years of deep mining (~1,000 meters)). The former dinosaurs are now role-models, all-clean, and heavily invest into (heavily government subsidized) off-shore wind and solar. Market liberalization (separation of generation from transmission) broke up their monopolies but also relieved them from former duties to reliably feed the grid 24/7 which suddenly became the responsibility of our government grid agency.

Clean dinosaurs now are mere 'market participants' who offer their generation capacities at will (if profitable). The (formerly strict regional or national) dinosaurs acquired critical flexible capacities all over Europe, even as far as the British Isles, making them more influential, more powerful as they ever had been in the past (not all-year-round but on these critical days when renewables are 'out of order' due to 'bad weather'). Now it seems, they began to learn it's sometimes even more profitable to shut off a critical number of their continent-wide dispersed flexible generation (unplanned failure, errr... act of nature... sh*t happens) which on days of stressed renewables supply explodes spot prices continent-wide; not far from market failure. Fantastic profits for even lesser expenses (ENRON gamblers could not have dreamed of such leverage). California 2000-2001? We can surpas that, continent-wide... In theory, the European grid will desintegrate into surviving parts, when supply misses to cover demand. So we firmly believe, it will survive, when physical limits are tested... btw. most severly in the continental grids most connected centre (Germany)... Just, go ahead...

Indeed, renewables became the cheapest way to get electricity---but just 'generate', not 'consume'!): multi megawatts wind turbines and cheap Chinese-made solar arrays. But there are a couple of drawbacks the Green lobby is constantly hiding or denying, because of an ocean of disregarded costs which reverses the main argument: renewables are cheap. The opposite is true; if the goal is 'renewables only'.

• not 24/7, instead totally (reliable generation < 0.4% of capacity) inflexible and weather dependent (wind); resp. day/night: 0% (solar).
  
• solar almost useless during two full months (of our) winter; in the remaining months at least astronomically predictable and supplies a reliable minimal daylight output under worst case weather conditions (overcast);
  
• wind suffers from multiple days-long doldrums (2 weeks-long can be found in historic weather logs (~150 years)); especially in summer and winter; which often are not regional, but once in a while continent-wide (e.g. stable high pressure system in summer or winter)
  
• lengthy doldrums occur offshore too
  

Consequences are:

• a renewables dominated grid requires a widely redundant, manifold oversized transmission grid, with investment costs exceeding (in our case) 400 billion euros; even without costs for extending distribution grids (not on pylons but below sidewalks and streets in each city) for more rooftop solar or BEVs.
  
• massive battery storage to provide balancing power (automatic+manual frequency control reserves) and vital inertia to replace rotating masses of former turbo generators)
  
• reliable worst-case (weather) backup capacity for 100% of peak load: (70? gigawatts) hundreds of gas turbines with just few hundred annual operating hours.... which no one would build or operate without full cost compensation (plus reasonable profit) just for maintaining capacities in cold/hot reserve.
  
• sufficient gas/hydrogen storage for up to nine weeks worst-case reserve (btw.should we even think of and calculate costs for the risks of a volcanic winter?); ashes block sunlight for years; temps drop heavily; less winds.
  
• continent-wide transmission capacities for vast (dozens gigawatt) cross-border flows, by far exceeding the original purpose of HVAC transmission grids (generation near consumption hotspots; mutually shared, minimized backup capacities)
  
• even the cheapest renewables (generation) results in the most expensive electricity (supply) to customers 24/7 (due to grid, backup, balancing costs).
  

So, to overcome fossils please don't copy a 100% renewables approach like we still try. We follow our destiny, another "Endsieg" (final victory) is in the making. "Wunderwaffen" (superweapons; this time not the mighty 'V2 missile', but hydrogen) will achieve it. It needs total collapse first, before we will admit: the path we mutually agreed on (due to ideologic bans for thinking) leads to catastrophe, never earlier---a dangerous peculiarity of our nation.

Please, prefer the American approach (open to every tech; markets decide, not politicians; which even can mean: "Drill baby, drill!". CO2 can be separated and disposed reliably in former gas deposits) or the French approach: nuclear is all you need.

Meanwhile, using hydrogen for steel production is a very good idea. But only if the hydrogen is cleanly acquired... (That is, by not burning oil to get that hydrogen.)

I doubt that, especially if it's clean hydrogen.

• volumes: there will be not sufficient renewable energy in Europe to generate the required masses of hydrogen
  
• import: from Africa (solar) (supposedly ignoring CO2 of sea shipping)...
  
• domestic: you have to industrialize the remaining uninhabited lands (unspoiled nature?) with wind and solar...
  
• costs: hydrogen made steel is many times more expensive; not competitive;
  

So you have to ban (dirty) steel imports; dictate a domestic 'green steel' market; that is: go ahead into a government planned economy where bridges will collapse because building new ones becomes financially infeasible.

Economists or engineers can't demonstrate (reliable calculations instead of propaganda) how such 'plans' for hydrogen as energy storage or for steel production can ever be successful, that's is "competitive" or at least that there's a prospect for competitiveness after a decades-long subsidized development of an hydrogen industry.

We have no autocratic world government to force renewables+hydrogen onto other countries (taking their competitive advantage; resp. forcing e.g. China to iternalize CO2 costs).

A last thought: mutual coordination of coal and steel production capacities was the initial cause to form the "European Coal and Steel Community" in 1950, later "Europ. Economic Community", now "European Union"; not because convinced Europeans were willing to cooperate for the common good; but out of deep distrust of 'German huns' to control this strategic capabilities which is vital for any arms-buildup and warfare. The eternal Russia is also part of this continent (with plenty coal and iron ore).

It seems to me, much of nowadays 'green' transformation plans (e.g. hydrogen pipelines, offshore wind, subsea cables) to save the climate takes a reliable and lasting peace for granted. That's no longer the case.