H-TEC Systems has revealed the University of Stuttgart purchased a 1MW PEM ME450 electrolyser as part of the WAVE-H2 project.
The German university will use the electrolyser at its test centre that is currently being built on the site of the Freudenstadt campus, which will provide innovative research opportunities for ‘hydrogen in production’ in the future.
The goal of the WAVE-H2 hydrogen test centre is to further advance the decarbonisation process in industry and gain improvements and insights using the example of the overall system of the hydrogen industrial research platform through the help of new developments.
The platform will be built on an industrial scale and is divided into hydrogen production, storage, conversion and use areas, with the H-TEC Systems electrolyser covering the PEM electrolysis activity in the project. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will fund the project with €36m ($39m).
Alexander Detke, Team Lead Sales at H-TEC Systems, said, “The WAVE-H2 project will create a hydrogen-based innovation platform that not only supports industry but also plays an important role in the technology development and staff training.”
One focus of the project will be on bivalent systems that can be operated with renewably generated electricity if electricity prices are low in the future or with hydrogen in the event of a power shortage. The platform is also expected to be capable of including different consumer groups that can be flexibly supplied with hydrogen, natural gas, electricity and heat.
The test centre will also utilise innovation modules that can investigate and scale up new technologies on a laboratory scale. Following preliminary tests, these technologies can be transferred into the industrial network. The hydrogen industrial research platform will create an innovation pipeline for the application of hydrogen and accelerate the decarbonisation of the industrial sector.
In April, H-TEC Systems constructed a manufacturing facility to produce PEM electrolyser stacks in Hamburg, Germany, located in Victoria Park.
The facility will combine stack development, production, testing and service all at the same location. The production of PEM electrolysis stacks is expected to begin next year, providing a total electrolysis capacity of up to 5GW.
