Cool study with some useful information and links, thanks for posting.
Something not mentioned (I guess you missed) but surely relevant is that water is not actually consumed by the use of Hydrogen, it is only loaned, as long as the hydogen stays as hydrogen, but at the point of use, when hydrogen is combusted or reverse electrolysed in fuel cells, the water has to be reconstituted, as an exhaust product of the hydrogen consumption.
In the case of fuel cells used to power local microgrids around the solar installation 24/7, then this water can easily be recirculated, but note that the water is purified, in a similar way as distillation, by it going through the cycle from hydrogen and back again, so actually is higher quality than the water at the input, assuming no contact with toxic materials at any point in the cycle. So a community living from local solar installation driving fuel cells to local micro-grid to get local 24/7 backed up electrical power, will also have as a side effect, water purification. It probably would make sense for most communities to take their domestic water supply from the output of the fuel cells, so in effect, the hydrogen backed up community solar installation functions also as a sola powered water purification filter, as far as the community living from it are concerned.
So the water lost then, is only the water actually given away as part of the hydrogen excess generated by the community, supplied as fuel to external transportation. Logically, any transportation requiring refuelling, if they have not simply ditched their valuable exhaust water, also has water to give, in return for hydrogen fuel received.
Like this, if all communities are solar hydrogen powered, then all communities also have a continuous supply of distilled quality water, to put even into their hydrogen electrollyisis, further improving efficiencies of the system.
It makes perfect sense, viewed in terms of solar powered, hydrogen backed up, off-grid communities supplying hydrogen fuel to all transportation.
Note also that everyone in a country working in this mode would also be receiving a very generous UBI, their individual share of the money continuously issued to all people reflecting the solar energy product put to use, which transportation would need to use to purchase fuel, and everyone would need to purchase food, rent, etc. This stipend would be indexed to a world market established value in Joules per money token, equivalent to more than 10K US dollars per person per month, as was seen when stimulus of this level was previously issued in US.
Hence probably the real reason the scheme you mention in Australia was apparently sabotaged by misinformation around the water consumption of hydrogen.
The banks would absolutely not have much part to play in a world no longer saddled by debt, so they will oppose that, funding whatever "Studies" are necessary to make solar and hydrogen look unviable.
But this is humanity going native on Earth, becoming part of nature, adopting similar handling of energy as nature uses in plants, it is inevitable for survival, and nature will devour the value of every currency in ever bigger bites now, until we do it, it seems to me.
I hope you are not put off too much by how seemingly unpopular the subject of successful solar hydrogen is, in Medium, it can seem like we our efforts to expose this truth are futile, attracting few followers, but it is natural that algos designed to maximise profits will do nothing to promote stories about what is effectively the end of capitalism, since these are not in the interests of the platform, which has to make profits for the foreseeable future, there is a conflict of interest between seeking profits from users, and being in users best interests, same as any other, but Medium is maybe slightly better than most.
Keep up the good work! :)
