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While on the face of it,solar derived hydrogen cells look like a clean, CO2 free solution, making all that 'clean' hydrogen from abundant, free seawater has other consequences

As is becoming clear with the desalination of seawater the byproduct is concentrated brine, denser than normal seawater, if not disposed of correctly it can sink to the ocean floor and kill off everything there.

If we then add to the effluent from desalination by going industrial with solar powered electrolysis of seawater to produce huge amounts of hydrogen, it will be one more major threat to our already highly threatened oceans.

Particularly those areas close to coastlines.

Not sure about that. If you put your plant anywhere near a big enough river outlet you'd think that would water it down nicely? When you go on holiday to a small island, the sea water is far more salty, because... no rivers.

Hydrogen destroys the ozone layer - the many tiny leaks in large scale systems will roast all life on earth

Downvoted for needless hyperbole.

I get your point (look at issues in the Dead sea), but it doesn't take a genius to use the brine as a by product, i.e. sea salt.

It's worked for beer and spirits for centuries, malt...old whisky barrels etc.

The problem is the sheer scale of the brine produced, there is only so much use for sea salt, one small plant could produce enough salt to keep you in chips for decades.

Discharging brine into rivers could have serious longterm effects on the ecology and it's balance, possibly causing irreparable damage.

There is a wealth of research into the problems but still with no real answers, each site needs to have a thorough impact study performed because currents vary with topography and season, some site could possibly handle ten times the effluent compared to a similar looking site.

I have been involved in developing a domestic, solar water treatment system for some years, most of the technical problems to produce a product are surmountable, the effluent is one of the most difficult problems to overcome.

Wouldn't you be better off using the solar panels to charge batteries?

Why not use PV to make 2H2 and O2. Use the H2 in fuel cells. Use the O2 to raise the efficiency of any thermodynamic energy production - burning diesel in pure O2 results in NO NOx and over 90% efficiency so nearly halving the CO2 per bang. H2 can be stored easily - we used to have massive gasometers in every town in the UK and their storage capacity is quite large. Now if we did that in the US deserts - massive PV, Make H2 and O2 to store separately to make electricity when its dark or in other times of need. So only a limitied amount of water is required - no saline problems.

It always amuses me that nay-sayers come up with arguments that, if used when the first internal combustion engine had been invented we'd still be knee deep in horseshit.

I'm not sure we will get to a 'hydrogen economy' but I can certainly see it as a massive part of the solution. I read in the late 80s/early 90s that the electricity->H2->electricity energy cycle could achieve over 80% efficiency (this include usage of waste heat but not recycling the O2) and yet people scream it wont work as they heat their houses on gas at the same level of efficiency and with greater pollution.

Hydrogen can't be stored "easily". It has a habit of making its way through a variety of different container materials, causes hydrogen embrittlement leading to container vessel failures, and either requires:

a) massive volumes to store a significant mass, or...

b) cryogenc storage to get down to manageable volumes, which in turn needs massive amounts of power to keep it cold. And you don't want to be near it if the cooling system fails.

Sounds like a seriously wasteful energy cycle:

[1] use solar generated electricity to electrolyse hydrogen from water

[2] compress hydrogen using (very likely) electric power

[3] use hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity

Hold on, the tanks on the left have a fence behind them, and bollards in front. I want to see how they the trailer there!

The picture at the top of the referenced article has clearly been Photoshopped!

The left hand set of tanks clearly 'chop' the top of the right hand yellow bollard. And when you look closer, the shadows on the three sets of tanks are not consistent with each other and the building on the left!

Shoddy work by Microsoft PR.

I didn't see, or look for it at first, but this really is very poorly Photoshopped Image, why on earth would they cheat us on such a subject...

The shadow of the bollards corresponds to that of the trailer on the far right, the sun was quite low, whilst the cylinders clearly show an image with a midday shadow.

Then there's that strange shadow of the fence in between the centre and right hand trailers....

And what are those cylinders supposed to be feeding ? Is it supposed to be that "flexible" hose that runs into the building, were talking hydrogen here, a tiny atom that is difficult to contain within even non porous structures and yet here we are with flexible hoses,,,

Very likely the bollards were put there after the tanks were installed to stop people driving into them. A large quantity of hydrogen, stored under pressure, is something to be wary of.

And, as you say, they look a lot more like tanks than fhe fuel cells TFA implies.

While hydrogen as an energy carrier (not a fuel like diesel) does seem attractive if one just looks at the hydrogen + oxygen => water + power equation, it omits 99% of what makes hydrogen so complicated.

From manufacturing hydrogen, which today is mostly done using the reforming of natural gas (releasing CO2 in the process), to storing (super-high pressure, super-low (liquid) temperature storage, binding to nickel, etc.) and transport (see storage), hydrogen is not an easy gas to handle.

Hydrogen causes metal embrittlement, as it'll change the material while it seeps through the storage tank or transport pipe's sides. It also becomes highly explosive when mixed with almost no or a lot of oxygen. In the past few years there have been at least two major explosions at hydrogen refueling facilities (Norway & California).

Even assuming that the hydrogen is produced using wasteful electrolysis (throwing away >50% of the input power), it would need to stored in a way that is reliable enough that you'll still have some hydrogen left by the time that the emergency occurs that requires the fuel cells. High-pressure storage is leaky. Cold-storage is reliable, but requires a lot of power and means that once the power fails, you need to also power the cooling system. Releasing hydrogen bound to nickel is a super slow process.

Fuel cells themselves come with a share of issues. They run very, very hot (hundreds of degrees), their internal surface can become contaminated (from impure input gases) which reduces reaction speed and they do not last forever.

There is a reason why diesel and gas generators are so popular. Can just keep a few cans of fuel lying around without special precautions and the generator will usually Just Work (tm) if you provide it with an occasional bit of TLC. Diesel and gasoline are also rather safe, with diesel practically impossible to ignite and gasoline vapours being the major hazard, if you can get it properly mixed with oxygen.

I wish Microsoft luck on this project, but it sounds like this 'backup system' might require its own backup system, at least until they have worked out the kinks with the hydrogen system.

"I wish Microsoft luck on this project, but it sounds like this 'backup system' might require its own backup system, at least until they have worked out the kinks with the hydrogen system."

It is in a sense good that Backup systems are more esoteric as they are meant to cope with highly unlikely circumstances. So using energy source that others are not going deplete is relevant strategy for business continuity.

You missed out the energy requirements in compressing Hydrogen for storage and the massive costs that would be entailed in rolling out Hydrogen distribution infrastructure.

Biofuels are a far superior "green" fuel, no storage problems, can use existing distribution infrastructure and as second generation biofuels use agricultural waste instead of primary food production the the valid argument that biofuels displace food production no longer apply.

Large scale greenhouses can be used to replace power stations for electrical power generation. The plants grown inside the greenhouse are pulverised and desiccated before use as the fuel source for the electrical generation. The heat and the CO2 released in the combustion process are captured (and recaptured) within the gas impermable greenhouse, providing a huge acceleration in plant growth. A jungle in a bottle. To achieve reliable 24h/365d power delivery to the national grid the greenhouse must therefore use the ground as very large thermal store and have an appropriate lighting system.

Pros

Reliable power delivery 24h/365d unlike PV and wind. Good as they are.

No CO2 released (handy for carbon neutrality by 2030) Gas impermable.

No H20 released (handy for a deserts, but Brownfield and Opencast site with broken ecosystems can be used.

No fossil fuels usage

A greenhouse reliable technology that has been available for use for 120 years.

Power for 300,000 homes.

Cons

50 square kilometres/ 20 square miles produces to a gigawatt. 4.5*4.5 mls

or 100mw = 2sq miles.

Cost irrelevant, carbon neutral by 2030. Shovel ready in two months, if taken seriously.

The best plants (the one they make tequila from) can manage to convert 5% of light into power. We can do 5 times that with PV and nearer 90% utilising the suns heat directly to heat things that need heating - you could make a solar Bessemer converter but probably not in the Midlands of the UK.