Unpacking electrolysers, with Accelera by Cummins

Guest bios:

Denis Thomas is Director of Business Development and Marketing for water electrolysis at Accelera by Cummins, which has acquired the activities of Hydrogenics in 2019.

Before joining the company in 2014, Mr. Thomas worked 8 years in the solar photovoltaic sector in Europe. Mr. Thomas holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and in Renewable Energy.

Michael Bartsch is the Regional Sales and Business Development manager for water electrolysis at Accelera by Cummins. Before joining the company in 2020, Mr Bartsch worked for 26 years in a mixture of Mining, Petroleum, Water Treatment and Geothermal sectors. Mr. Bartsch is an Industrial Chemist with formal qualifications in Science, Business Administration and Energy.

Cummins is more than 104 years old, specialising in engines and gensets with 70,000 people worldwide. Accelera is a brand within the company that hosts all the new technologies and has five main businesses and between 2000-3,000 employees

2.30 – The main technologies within Accelera

- Electrolysers

- Fuel cells

- Electrified components

- Power train systems

- Traction systems

4.00 – Explanation of the different types of electrolysers

- Alkaline
- PEM
- Solid oxide
- Anion Exchange Membrane

06.30 - PEM - Proton Exchange Membrane.

08.15 - Solid oxide and Anion Exchange Membrane

09.15 - Concerns about the catalyst being used in PEM technology

10.44 - Sizes of electrolysers that Accelera Manufacture

The products are PEM technology. 30 bar pressure. HyLyzer 500, 1000 and 5000.

13.00 - Interesting and challenging projects across the globe:

The Quebec project is commercial, meaning running the electrolyser daily. The hydrogen is liquefied and then delivered by Air Liquide to industrial customers.

15.30 – Emergence of much larger projects across the globe

Customers are now leaning more toward double-digit and triple-digit production.

16.26 - Learnings through the project in Canada

19.17 - Australian market compared to the rest of the world

The speed to market in the other locations is by far faster at the moment. In Australia, there is a push for regional codes and standards adoption. When products have to be modified before they can be introduced so there's a lag factor there in terms of being able to deploy or modify existing designs for them to be accepted.

“We will initially be importing products mainly from Europe, but it'll get to a point where the project size here in Australia is big enough to justify local manufacturing.”

24.15 – Manufacturing of the Electrolysers
“We've been working a lot on designing new processes and we are implementing them in the different factories. We have started already in Belgium, which was an existing factory. We have built another in Spain that will start production in the first quarter of next year. We will be using this flow-based manufacturing. It is super interesting because it gives us a lot of flexibility.”

25.00 – Current challenges

- The business case of producing hydrogen; in many cases, it is more expensive than the conventional way of producing hydrogen with natural gas.

- The size is increasing, and there is an increased link with renewable power which also brings challenges.

- Electrolyser technologies are new so companies need to get used to it

- Infrastructure challenges - hydrogen storage and pipelines

- Execution capability

Regulation and policy can be used to play an important role in giving a premium value to hydrogen in comparison to the incumbent technology…Where there is a lack of policy, there is a high uncertainty on those projects, meaning that it is difficult for us to anticipate and forecast the market.

33.13 - Which skillsets will be sought after in the coming years?

35.00 – Advancements in technology

- Keep monitoring the developments on the commercial market, from universities and institutions.

- Need to reduce the cost of technology and the cost of hydrogen (first step is standardisation).

“If you can design a stack that you don't need to replace, it is, I would say, a major advantage. And that's clearly what we are trying to do is to extend the lifetime of our cell stacks.”

38.19 - What can be achieved by Accelera in the next 5-10 years?

- We are targeting between 6 to 13 billion dollars in revenue by 2030

40.00 - Final thoughts/comments

“We are trying to leverage the synergies of the traditional businesses of Cummins with the new businesses of Accelera, allowing us to advantage of all the people and the infrastructure that we have in place in those 190 countries.”

- We need stable policies to allow us to make decisions

- Be patient as there will be a lot of challenges but it is super fascinating and motivating to work in this space

- The hydrogen sector is like building a plane as we are taking off

Links:

https://www.accelerazero.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accelerazero/

linkedin.com/in/denis-thomas-cummins

linkedin.com/in/michael-bartsch-48612117