H2e Power sets up AEM demo plant for Oil India Ltd

H2e Power Systems, a fuel cells company which intends to build a gigawatt plant for the manufacture of SOEC electrolysers in Maharashtra, is also setting up a AEM-electrolyser plant for Oil India Ltd, a state-owned company which produces oil and natural gas mainly from North East India. The hydrogen produced will be used by OIL to blend with its natural gas that is piped to customers.

The ground-breaking for the plant happened on December 21 last year. The plant is expected to start producing hydrogen in a couple of months.

This, of course, is a demo plant. OIL is aggressive in hydrogen and has larger plans for hydrogen.

AEM, or 'anion exchange membrane' is said to be an emerging technology, but H2e Power's Founder President & CEO, Siddharth Mayur, has told the Busines Line newspaper that the company that it already has the technology. 

The company plans to put up a 200MW AEM electrolyser manufacturing unit in due course.

H2e Power to build 1 GW plant to make SOEC electrolysers in Maharashtra

H2e Power Systems Pvt Ltd, a Pune-based company, plans to invest $ 40 million in setting up a SOEC electrolyser plant of 1GW capacity in the state of Maharashtra, the company's Founder President and CEO, Siddharth Mayur, has told the Business Line newspaper. 

The company is considering two locations -- either Pune or near a port in Maharashtra. The latter is because of export opportunities. The plant is expected to go on stream in 2023. 

H2e Power is financially backed by the Poonawalla family of Pune, the promoters of Serum Institute of India, which manufactures vaccines, including the Covishield vaccine for Covid-19. The Poonawalls invested an undisclosed sum of money in January 2020. Their equity stake has also not been disclosed.

Mayur has said that the company, with the intention of engendering a full manufacturing ecosystem, had been developing vendors for the 370-odd components that go into the manufacture of stacks, balance of plant and power electronics. Now, regardless of where the company will put up its plant, all the vendors will be within 200 km. 

H2e Power, was started a decade ago and it developed fuel cells with technical help from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute. In the recent years, it has been wanting to get into the reverse of fuel cells, which are electrolysers. Its chosen technology is solid oxide electrolysis cells, but Mayur has told Business Line that the company also has AEM technology with it.

Indeed, H2e Power will also set up a AEM electrolyser plant, of capacity of 200MW.

In 2020, H2e Power tookover a Swiss fuel cell company called Hexis AG. Today, H2e Power has manufacturing facilities in Germany and Switzerland, from where it has made supplies to customers in the US and South Korea.

Mayur has said that the company is looking for another round of funding, possibly from strategic investors.

H2e Power's strength is its technological depth--it owns all the key patents and does not have to depend upon anyone else for technology. 

Comment

If India should not miss the hydrogen bus, it should create a manufacturing ecosystem. Today, tenders for electrolyser supplies will be answered only with the machines from abroad, which only helps value addition abroad, going against Prime Minister Modi's plan for atmanirbhar or self-reliant, India.

Today, the only electrolyzer manufacturing plant that India has is that of the US company, Ohmium, which has set up its only factory in India. The second is mostly likely to be that of H2e Power. 

Over time, the government of India is sure to realize that if electrolysers should not go the 'PV modules way' (90 per cent of cells and modules are imported), then it has to create a local manufacturing ecosystem. When that realization dawns, its tenders would favor locally manufactured products. Ohmium and H2e Power (and perhaps Reliance and Adanis) will stand to gain by such policies. 

Reliance Industries signs MoU with Gujarat govt, commits to invest $75b in green projects including hydrogen

India's largest private sector company, Reliance Industries Ltd, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of the state of Gujarat in which it committed invesments of $75billion in green energy projects. These projects include the manufacture electrolysers and setting up of a green hydrogen ecosystem.

"RIL will invest another Rs 60,000 crore in setting up New Energy Manufacturing-Integrated Renewable Manufacturing: 1) Solar PV Module (manufacture of Polysilicon, wafer, cell & module); 2) Electrolyzer; 3) Energy-storage Battery; 4) Fuel Cells," reads a Reliance statement issued today.  

The company has asked for 450,000 acres of land in the Kutch region of Gujarat.

Reliance Industries had disclosed its intentions to get into hydrogen in a big way earlier. Last year, it said it would invest Rs 75,000 crore in green-hydrogen. It may also be remembered that a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd, had in October last year signed a co-opertion agreement for technology development and manufacture of electrolysers, with Stiesdal A/S of Denmark.

It had then said that it would bring green hydrogen to "millions of Indians".

Ohmium to open an R&D centre at IIT Madras Reserch Park

 

Ohmium, the US-based electrolyser manufacturer, whose only plant in Bengaluru is the only electrolyser plant in India, has finalized plans to start an R&D centre at the IIT Madras Research Park, which is a sort of an incubation centre promoted by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Confirming the development, a senior official of Ohmium said that the R&D centre's work would be on the next generation electrolyzer technology. More details would be revealed in due course, he said.

Ohmium, promoted by investors led by Ahmad Chatila, a former founder and CEO of the solar developer, SunEdison, manufactures at Bengaluru PEM electrolysers, capable of producing 6 kg of hydrogen per hour at 27.6 bar pressure. The company was recently in news for having shipped its first electrolyser back to the United States.

The R&D centre is presumably to look into the emerging electrolyser technologies, such as AEM (anion exchange membrane) and improvements in solid oxide electrolysers.

Identify 10 Hyrdogen projects, fund them, Alliance tells govt of India

The Indian Hydrogen Alliance (IH2A), an industry-led coalition meant to promote hydrogen economy, has suggested that the government should identify ten hydrogen projects in the country and provide incentives to them.  

“IH2A would like to suggest that the Government of India identify at least 10 National H2 Projects by end 2022, provide incentives to encourage feasibility studies for such projects within the Union Budget 2022-23, and invite industry consortia to bid for such national Bharat H2 projects,” says a statement from the Alliance, submitted as its wish-list to the government.  

IH2A counts Reliance Industries and JSW among its corporate members. Think-tanks such as CEEW and TERI and government agencies such as Niti Aayog are also its members.

The alliance says that India would need $25b to create a domestic hydrogen supply chain, starting from 25GW of electrolyser capacity, to produce the needed 5 million tons of green hydrogen. 

To make this possible, the alliance has suggested the creation of a Hydrogen Economy Development Fund “with investments from the government of India, multilateral agencies, global institutional investors, climate finance funds and the private sector,” the statement says. The fund should raise at least $1billion by 2025, it says.  

The ten projects chosen as the recipients of the incentives, should be implemented as ‘open innovation’ projects so that learnings can be replicated in next generation of H2 projects and the projects can act as regulatory sand-box for the next generation of H2 projects, IH2A has told the government. 

Here is the IH2A full statement:

 

BHEL explores tie-ups for electrolyser, fuel cells manufacture

BHEL, a state-owned company whose main business is the manufacture of boilers and turbine for thermal power plants, is now looking for joint venture partners for getting into the production of electrolysers and fuel cells.

The company will come out with an invitation for 'expression of interest' (EOI) within one week, the Business Line newspaper reports, quoting an unnamed official. 

BHEL had first come out with a EOI on November 10 for the same purpose and had set November 30 as the deadline for the responses.

“BHEL is seeking interest for partnering with it to address growing Hydrogen economy business through manufacturing of (i) Electrolyser System for Hydrogen Production and (ii) Hydrogen based PEM Fuel Cell System,” the invitation for EOI had said. “Based on the responses received, a separate request for partnership shall be issued by BHEL for selection of Partner(s) in the targeted areas of Hydrogen Value Chain business,” it had said.

The source said that the response was good and a team is evaluating the responses, but did not wish to give out any further details as the matter was still “internal”, says the news report. 

Asked why a second EOI, the official said that the first one was more to test the market, based on which “we will not enter into any tie-up". The upcoming invitation would be more detailed and would possibly result in joint ventures, the Business Line report quotes the official as saying.

Apart from boilers, turbines and transmission products, BHEL also has had a presence in transportation—it produces locomotive engines. It also from time to time produces some products, such as guns, for the Defence.

Comment

BHEL is broke, mainly because its business mainstay, thermal power projects, is dying with no hopes of revival. In 2020-21, it made a net loss of ₹2,717 crore, on a turnover of ₹16,296 crore. In the first half of the current financial year, its turnover was ₹7,634 crore and net loss ₹513 crore.

But BHEL's problems run deeper--very poor R&D and reluctance to enter new businesses. The writing has been on the wall clearly for quite some time that the thermal power business would go. Yet, the company got into no new businesses. In the past, the company has toyed with many diversifications, from small passenger planes to wind turbines, but inertia always prevailed.

The second EOI, soon after the first one, perhaps indicates that the response to the first one was nothing much to write home about. 

However, it may not be a bad idea for a technology company to tie-up with BHEL because of the immense manufacturing facilities it has. The company is an expert in heaving engineering. Therefore, one should welcome its foray into electrolyers, fuel cells. Better late than never. 

Thyssenkrupp rolls into Indian hydrogen sector

German conglomerate, Thyssenkrupp, has big plans for the hydrogen sector in India, reports Economic Times newspaper. 

The company has plans to invest in India, the report says. 

German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp is betting big on producing green hydrogen through its proprietary electrolyser technology in India, at a time when plans are afoot at the headquarters to spin off its hydrogen business and take it to the bourses soon. 

 
The company said that there was a growing demand for electrolyser technology globally as well as in India as industries look for greener fuels to reduce their carbon footprint and meet their sustainability goals. Being one of the few companies to have demonstrated scalable electrolyser technology, Thyssenkrupp was ramping up its production facilities. 
 
"While ramping up, there are also plans to invest in India. We are working out on which part of the value chain of producing electrolyser can we invest in and develop in India," Cetin Nazikkol, the chief executive of Thyssenkrupp Asia Pacific Africa, told the newspaper.

Comment

Thyssenkrupp, one of world's most respectable engineering companies, entering India is good news for the country, because the company has experience in electrolysers.

A year back, Thyssenkrupp announced that it would build a huge, 88MW electrolyser plant for Canadat at Quebec. The plant would produce 11,100 tons of green hydrogen annually, and would be built right there, at Quebec. Commissioning of the plant was scheduled for late 2023. The plant would count among the world's largest.