Hydrogenium Resources: An Indian company that wants to tap into East European funds and technology for producing hydrogen in India

Hydrogenium Resources, a recently-formed company, intends to tap into East European countries for funds and technology, to set up hydrogen production plants in India, from where the gas would be exported back to the European countries, the Business Line newspaper has reported.

The idea of Umesh Sachdev, the founder of the Hydrogenium Resources, is like this: The European Union has allocated money to all its members for promoting hydrogen economy. These East European countries, therefore have access to funds, but do not have the scale for putting up hydrogen plants. Some of them also have some technology.

India, on the other hand, can bring to the table its frugal manufacturing capabilities and, of course, scale. Sachdev reckons that producing hydrogen in India would turn out to be cheaper. While he has not given out much details, since the exercise is still in its nascent stages, he has said that Hydrogenium has initiated talks with several companies.

Hydrogenium Resources also has plans for another line of business in India. The company intends to put up small electrolysers alongside rooftop solar plants. A problem peculiar to India, which has been hampering growth of rooptop solar in India, is that the local utilities, financially distressed as they are, are loathe to letting people putting up their rooftop solar capacities, fearing loss of business. As such, they do their best to prevent it. One of the ways of doing so is to refuse to buy any surplus power from the rooftop plans. With battery storage still being an expensive option to store surplus energy, unless the utility buys it for a fair price, all the energy produced on weekends and other holidays would go waste.

Hydrogenium Resources wants to bring in the option of producing hydrogen using such surplus energy--the gas can be stored in cylinders. The company intends to put up the electrolysers at its own cost and supply only the gas to the customer. It is in talks with a few rooftop 'open access' players, but they are still in the initial stages.