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Electrolytic hydrogen enables long-term energy storage way beyond what batteries can provide, which is exemplified by a 200 MW hydrogen plant in the United States having larger storage capacity than all the batteries currently linked to the electricity grid in the United States, including the batteries from Tesla.
"That's the big thing about hydrogen," Nel ASA president and CEO Hรฅkon Volldal emphasised during question time, following the Norway-based company's presentation of first-quarter results in Oslo on Wednesday, April 22.
"We need to take a fresh look at our energy system and a stronger focus needs to be placed on renewable hydrogen, which can be produced locally and close to end-users," said Volldal after reporting a second purchase order by Mesure Process for containerised proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser equipment. PEM electrolysers make use of platinum and iridium, platinum group metals (PGMs) which South Africa hosts in abundance.
"The momentum for containerised PEM solutions is picking up. The good thing about that solution is that we have a fairly short delivery time on containerised PEM solutions.
"We can deliver systems in less than 12 months. The order we booked in April will be delivered in 2027. If we get orders now until the year end, I think we have an opportunity to deliver all of those, or close to all of those, in 2027, so we're hopeful that we can book more containerised PEM solutions," Volldal enthused.
The goal for the next generation PEM under development is to slash the stack cost by a whopping 70%.
Mining Weekly: When do you expect to launch the next-generation PEM?
Volldal: If I could give you an exact date, I would, but if there's one thing we learned is that technology development is uncertain, it takes time. There are always tricky things that you need to overcome that could be pertaining to the concept design itself, could be pertaining to availability of materials, or you end up with a cost that you don't like, so you have to re-engineer it. With PEM, we have the ambition to build a full prototype stack this year. Then that has to be tested, and then we need to spend some time to get partners to help us industrialise it. So, it will take a couple of years - whether that means we can launch it in mid- 2028 or late 2028 or in 2029, I'm not able to say at the moment.
The benefit of the new PEM platform is that our goal is to take the cost down by 70% on the stack level, and in a PEM system, the stack is the most expensive component. That means we can significantly reduce capital expenditure (capex). It will be a low capex, low opex solution, so that's the Holy Grail. You get the cake and you can eat it. It's comparable with pressurised alkaline. It might have even better energy efficiency, and it could have a smaller footprint at a lower cost. The response is, as always with PEM, fantastic. So, it's more dynamic than pressurised alkaline, even though, I have to say, for larger pressurised alkaline systems, you also have fantastic dynamic capabilities. But we believe that this is something that will be even more competitive than the new alkaline product that we will launch on May 6, and that's why we continue to work on it.
Should I read PEM equals PGM?
Yes, but the iridium loading and the platinum loading is very limited. We will utilise much less iridium and platinum. The use of these will be at a very different level compared with what we see today.
IDEAL FOR CONTAINERISED PEM
In addition to the promising smaller projects that are ideal for a containerised PEM, larger projects in the 50 MW to 150 MW range are also emerging and these are expected to take on final-investment-decision status over the next quarters.
"The reason why containerised PEM ha...