Our Director of Hydrogen, Bryan Allen, recently joined host Lisa Ann Pinkerton on the Earthlings 2.0 podcast to discuss if rectifiers are green hydrogen’s unsung hero. They covered many other topics around green hydrogen…below are some excerpts from the conversation. Check out the full podcast here: https://earthlings-podcast.castos.com/
Lisa: In 10 years, where do you expect us to be in terms of adoption?
Bryan: I think we’re already on our way. There’s been some monumental legislation that really drove the use case for hydrogen. If you’re familiar with the Inflation Reduction Act, there are some great incentives that were put into that bill that really ensure hydrogen will be part of our energy future. There’s funding for seven large hydrogen hubs to be built around the U.S. to serve as large pilot applications. And when I say large pilots, these will be actual production facilities using hydrogen in multiple applications. Another thing that’s unique about hydrogen is if you convert it to ammonia, for example, it could be easily transported around the world. So if you look at countries who want to move away from being dependent on foreign oil, hydrogen presents a clean option for them to either produce themselves or import it from net producers that are going to be entering the marketplace.
Lisa: As long as it’s made from a renewable source or perhaps a waste source where the emissions are captured and any other energy that is used to convert the ammonia back to hydrogen comes from a renewable resource, right?
Bryan: Absolutely, and there’s several different technologies that are being looked at in addition to wind and solar. There’s some biofuel technologies being looked at, but I think a lot of those technologies are much further behind wind and solar since they’re proven technologies. If you’re dealing with wind and solar, you need an inverter to convert that DC source to AC. If you’re dealing with electrolyzers, you need a source to convert from AC to DC and get the right voltages and current for the electrolyzers to function properly. So at any point, if we’re talking about reducing our carbon footprint, a key component of that process is going to be power conversion equipment. And it’s just because we decided we wanted to live in an AC world when nature produces DC, right? The sun provides direct current, as do wind applications, and we decided that we want to live in an alternating current society. So there’s always going to be power conversion involved in that process and I’m proud to say that I think Dynapower makes the best rectifiers on the market.
Lisa: So you’re saying that if Thomas Edison had won the ACDC argument against Nikola Tesla that we’re talking about would be a lot less cumbersome and more straightforward to implement. But there’s advantages all over, but certainly direct current is a little more straightforward.
Bryan: Well, you know, back when they were having this argument, AC, the alternating current concept made a lot of sense. And so it was a great solution. But now that we’re generating power in a DC way, with renewables, it begs the question if we still need AC. It’s an interesting conversation, but I might add it’s pretty late to turn back.
Listen to the full podcast here: https://earthlings-podcast.castos.com/