ICIS Podcast – Technologies Making Hydrogen Happen

Thomas Chrometzka with David Battista and Jake Stones, on the ICIS energy podcast

July 13, 2020

Exploring different technologies within the electrolyser market and pushing towards greater cost transparency is imperative if renewable hydrogen is to become cost competitive. ICIS energy market reporters David Battista and Jake Stones speak to Thomas Chrometzka, head of business development at modular electrolyser firm Enapter to find out more. Here’s a sneak peak of what was discussed.

Replicating solar

”In our vision we see an electrolyser as a modular product that can be mass produced and we compare it to the solar panel which is also a mass-produced commodity, that you can stack together to have a smaller system size or gigawatt sized systems. At Enapter, we mimic this approach using our electrolysers, aiming to mass produce them, which will drive down the cost of the individual modules massively and allows you to stack them together to form electrolysers out of many different modules. This has advantages in terms of resiliency, ramping capabilities and many more.”

Disrupting the market

”The term prosumer was largely created due to the emergence of solar panels. All of a sudden, whether it’s a house, a small business or ultimately a factory, you could produce the electricity you needed on site. What completes the circle is a device that you put next to a modular solar system, which provides the fuels and gases that are needed. This is where our electrolyser comes in.”

Fit for purpose

”You can add the electrolyser into any field of application. The key to our success will be to mass produce the module. Because we have a modular build of our systems, we can produce very low cost, compact electrolysers and we can also stack them and arrive at a low cost large electrolyser… We believe that our goal is to have a very universal product, ultimately a commodity.”

Green hydrogen pricing

”If you have an electrolyser that lasts long and has a longer lifetime, it will produce your hydrogen cheaper because you just have more of it. We try to be very transparent and publish the prices for electrolysers and our lifetime and the OPEX and CAPEX costs. We hope that this helps people to assess what the true cost of the green hydrogen is.”

Listen to the full podcast here.