The whole thing comes down to precisely that, you have to get energy from somewhere. Theoretically if nuclear fusion becomes a thing then hydrogen fuel cels can become practical until you can run enough copper to deliver electricity directly for all the things that want electrical juice as a power source.
The answer to the solar power thing to run electorlysis is something like this: Solar panels are only 20% efficient and electrolysis is 70% efficient. So just thinking about raw numbers, with solar power you would extract 20% of that 70% by the time you are done.
The math isn't on our side here.
Solar photons and h2o are very abundant though. If you won 1 billion from a lottery but you ended up with 10% after taxes.. you still have 100 million.
Low efficiency isn't necessarily bad if the raw material is plentiful and the byproduct isn't significant?
Efficiency tends to improve over time as technology is developed..
Maybe the space required for the solar panels and electrolysis unit would be significant, but this video shows a couple of bottles of water running a engine. Maybe I'm the dog chasing a car right now.. I can't help but wonder.
(post is archived)