Electric vehicles and alternate fuel sources

There has been Hydrogen research going for 50 years and we are no closer commercial use, probably funded by the people who make fuel bowsers and gas tanks, it takes enormous amounts of power to produce and is unstable. Just 5 minutes ago I read a two-page article by some office jockey about saving power by lowering the voltage of the grid. Golden rule of electricity, halve the voltage double the current, double the current double the loses.
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@77louie400 was the chair polisher referring to the distribution or domestic end of the grid?
Imagine if every household and workplace had to replace all appliances and globes!
If the subject of his tome was the high voltage section, he has established his ignorance of the motif. 

I also think it has a lot to do with the size of the main transmission wires. If the power stations pumped out 240 volts into the mains the wires would have to be a foot thick.

The distributors want to send out 100,000 volts while the safety people would love the user operating on 12 volt.

His theory was if dropped the voltage down to below 230 volts we save power, 230 volts is the new standard voltage in theory as opposed to the 240 volts we have run at since day dot. In most cases we run down around 230 volts but when you have millions of tons of stuff spinning at a speed to produce 50hz and the whole county reliant on 50hz ever thing has to fit into that. The bit that was missing with old mate was if you drop the voltage, you raise the amps, and it is amps that cost you money. To drop the voltage in the line you either drop the voltage in the grid or replace or adjust all the transformers and that is never going to happen in our lifetime, so they do the best they can, they would be getting around winding down the transformers that they can, there is 60 transformers up our little country line and you could walk it in half a day.

240 volts was a nominal voltage, there is an allowable variance, 5%plus or minus from memory, and as to hydrogen generation, there is currently research into cheap production of it from water for fuel for micro turbines connected to micro generators, the turbines were invented in Adelaide by three uni students and who are currently working on larger scale motors for the army as on-site power supplies 
gumpy

Electric vehicle enthusiasts seem to be stuck on that pathway from whatever source (not nuclear) to charge the cars.

I don't think we can afford to dismiss any source of energy and "my science is better than your science" is counterproductive. Nothing is proven beyond doubt. The dismissal of hydrogen as a non-starter may come as a surprise to the largest and the most prestigious car companies in the world who are ramping up hundreds of millions of dollar research into this source of energy.

Just saying lets stop this confrontation and religious dismissal of other schemes as the wrong path. Early days and who knows banana peel juice may be the answer..

You may well be right Lang, something out of left field, may well be the answer, I don't have anything against Hydrogen or any emerging power source, there was talk of Hydrogen as an emerging power source when I was at Teck nearly 50 years ago.

It took nearly 70 years for Jules Verne to be vindicated as not an away with the fairies fiction writer when he wrote a book about a rocket ship to the moon. Da Vinci never lived the extra 300 years to see his toy helicopter eventually take flight. Science is NEVER "in" as many fundamentalists from all sides would have us believe to shut down any discussion not to their liking.

You’re right with the science bit, the micro turbine I mentioned was given to the engineering students as an impossible task, and the lecturers couldn’t believe when they built it and got it running, it’s the size of a match box, and produces 1kw of power, nasa actually came over to view it.
I should add, my son in law is the lead designer of the group.
gumpy

This is a really interesting chart.

It shows why Hydrogen is the fuel desperately being studied as its calorific value is two to four times that of anything else..