It's likely there will be many technologies in mix to the hydrogen economy.
Whist this plant is a win for Siemans and it's lucky short term grant funding it's not good energy strategy for a sustainable future.
Why ?
Unless the grid is completely fossil fuel free ( and what grid is ) the environment would be far better served by dumping the hydro energy straight into the grid or even charging large bank of tesla batteries and decreasing the fossil fuel input.
You need so much energy to put into the water and relatively little back from the hydrogen.
It's worth reviewing a statement from Hazer in the preliminary concept release.
"Typical external power consumption for electrolysis-based hydrogen production is 60-70 MWhrs per tonne of hydrogen. Utilising the Hazer Process in this operating model, the net energy demand for hydrogen production is less than 10 MWhrs per tonne of hydrogen, indicating that by combining a renewable energy system with natural gas supply, Hazer-based hydrogen production could produce approximately 6x the amount of hydrogen compared to electrolysis, with the same near-zero CO2 emission footprint "
Siemans has their eye on setting up Australia as major hydrogen exporter. When the have the chance to fully evaluate the PPP there will be other process that stacks up. The fact that Australia is sitting on massive natural gas resources is bloody brilliant for Hazer. This is really the right country to pull this off.
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