[stephengillie]

I thought the 80% efficiency metric meant they were successfully converting 80% of the water into gas.

Edit: I guess they mean they are producing enough hydrogen that they could burn that hydrogen (recombine it with water) to generate a constant 1.2v of electricity.

Also, what amperage is required for this to work?

[ansible]

Water is cheap, so converting X% of it to gas isn't the issue.

The main issue is how much energy are you putting in to get how much hydrogen gas. That hydrogen gas can be used to power a fuel cell (for example) which generates electricity.

Historically, the amount of electricity you get out of that conversion cycle (through the production of hydrogen gas) isn't great (don't have numbers in front of me). If they're improving that ratio, that is good news. If they're doing it with a cheap and durable catalyst, that's even better news.

[monochromatic]

My guess is that they're saying 20% of the input electricity is wasted.