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Honda - fuel your hydrogen car with solar - prototype
Production, Jan 29 2010 (The Hydrogen Journal)
- Honda has announced that it is developing a home solar power station for hydrogen cars.
It is developing the unit at the Los Angeles Center of Honda R&D Americas.
Honda says it will produce 0.5kg of hydrogen from 8 hours of sunlight (during the day time), using a 6kw, 48 panel solar array.
The hydrogen would be pumped into the car overnight.
It should create enough hydrogen during the day to run the car for a "typical daily commute" (Honda says 10,000 miles per year, or 27 miles per day, if the car is used every day).
It is developing a special high pressure electrolyser, which creates high pressure hydrogen directly from electricity, avoiding the need to have both an electrolyser and a compressor - this should also reduce the amount of power used by the compressor. Overall system efficiency is improved by 25 per cent compared to Honda's previous generation (August 2008) hydrogen solar system.
The same unit could also be used to generate hydrogen from grid electricity overnight, when there is surplus electricity.
A solar calculator on www.sroeco.com estimates at a 6kw solar panel will cost $50,000.
To get an estimate of the size of solar panel required, the largest solar panel on sale at Maplin Electronics is 150 watts and is 1.6 x 0.8m (1.25m2). So to get 6kw, 40 such panels would be required, with a total area of 50m2 would be required (e.g. covering a roof sized 10m x 5m).
