OVERVIEW - Siemens Energy electrolyser deal dwarfs rest in Q1 2023

The global electrolyser market concluded the first quarter of 2023 with a variety of equipment supply deals, partnerships, framework agreements and even some firm contracts. Siemens Energy stood out with the news of its selection to equip a “world-scale” eFuels facility in Texas with a total capacity of 1,800 MW.

This overview collects widely-reported deals and contracts for electrolyser supply that were officially announced by the better-known sector players in January-March 2023. They are presented below in alphabetical order.

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A quick look at the announcements shows that alkaline was the preferred electrolysis technology among customers during the first quarter of 2023, with proton exchange membrane (PEM) also scoring a few deals.

ACCELERA BY CUMMINS

In March, Cummins Inc announced that its zero-emission technologies business unit, newly-rebranded as Accelera by Cummins, got an order to supply a 90-MW PEM electrolyser system for Varennes Carbon Recycling’s (VCR) plant in Quebec, Canada.

Accelera will deliver four units of its largest electrolyser product – the HyLYZER-5000. Each one utilises 25 MW of electricity and is capable of producing up to 10 tonnes of hydrogen per day.

VCR is a state-backed consortium between Shell, Suncor and Proman. Its biorefinery, currently under construction and scheduled for completion in 2025, will use the produced green hydrogen and oxigen to convert waste material to low-carbon-intensity fuels and circular chemicals.

ELOGEN

During the opening quarter of 2023, Elogen reported landing two new contracts, though, one of them was actually signed in December 2022.

The company, which is part of French group Gaztransport & Technigaz SA (GTT), said in early January that German renewable energy firm Enertrag SE had tasked it with the design and production of a 10-MW PEM electrolyser for installation in 2024 on a site near Magdeburg. The device will have the capacity to produce up to 4 tonnes of green hydrogen per day, allowing the power system to compensate for wind and solar fluctuations. According to the announcement, in the medium term, the output will be supplying the 100% hydrogen pipelines of gas transmission system operator Ontras.

The following month, Elogen unveiled the signing of a contract to design and manufacture a 2.5-MW PEM electrolyser to CrossWind, the joint venture between Shell and Eneco that develops the Hollandse Kust Noord (HKN) wind project off the Dutch coast in the North Sea.

Green hydrogen production is one of the five key innovations identified by CrossWind to tackle the intermittent nature of offshore wind power generation. The unit is to be installed in 2025.

“This contract with CrossWind constitutes a major technological breakthrough since it will be the first time that an electrolyser of such power will be installed offshore as part of a very innovative offshore wind project,” Philippe Berterottiere, chairman and CEO of the GTT Group, commented at the time.

ENAPTER

The developer of anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolysers Enapter AG was active both when it comes to orders for small-scale devices and megawatt-scale systems during January-March 2023.

The Germany-based company first announced that its sales and integration partner Adsensys had received an order for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2023 of an AEM Multicore megawatt-class electrolyser to an unnamed Dutch energy company supplying fuels to B2B customers. Under this contract, Adsensys will install the AEM Multicore at a hydrogen filling station in the Netherlands. The particular system has the capacity to produce some 450 kilograms of green hydrogen per day.

At the end of January, Enapter said that, alongside integration partner YEST, it had obtained an order for the delivery of two AEM electrolysers totalling 2 MW. The systems will be used as part of a state-backed, 12.5-MW demonstration project on Jeju Island in South Korea. The purpose of this pilot project is to compare hydrogen production with different electrolysis technologies. A total of five companies are participating in the demo, but Enapter is the only supplier from Europe, it noted. YEST will handle the installation.

In February, Enapter reported orders to ship 135 units of its AEM EL 4.0 electrolysers to France and Taiwan for use in the fields of electricity storage and peak shaving. Having delivered 55 units to Hensoldt Nexeya France in December, the company has received an order from the same customer for an additional 60 EL 4.0 devices. At the same time, Hephas Energy has purchased 20 units for electricity storage in Taiwan.

Enapter also reported that it delivered over 1,200 EL 4.0 electrolysers to customers around the world in the last three months of 2022, corresponding to a total output of nearly 3 MW.

GREEN HYDROGEN SYSTEMS

Denmark’s Green Hydrogen Systems A/S (GHS) made all of its first-quarter order announcements during the month of January. It started by reporting deliveries of A-Series electrolysers to two unnamed customers in the renewable energy sector in December 2022 and then unveiled its largest order to date. It said that an undisclosed international customer had ordered 16 A-Series pressurised alkaline electrolyser units totalling 7.2 MW. Most of them should be delivered in 2023 and the rest in 2024.

Then, at the end of the month, GHS said that Spanish industrial group Ercros had purchased a containerised system of two A-Series electrolysers totalling 0.9 MW for delivery in 2024. The system will support an increase in ammonia production at an existing facility.

At the end of 2022, the company’s total order backlog amounted to 13 MW.

ITM POWER

Sheffield-based ITM Power Plc is one of the companies that reported orders in the hundreds of megawatts range in the first quarter.

At the end of January, ITM said that a unit of minority shareholder Linde Plc had ordered, on behalf of German energy company RWE AG, two 100-MW PEM electrolyser systems. Linde Engineering will install the electrolysers at a RWE-operated site in Lingen, Germany. The units will run on electricity generated by offshore wind farms.

ITM noted that these contracts will mark the first deployment of the new Linde Engineering/ITM Power standard module skids of 10 MW for large-scale installations that utilisie MEP 30 bar electrolyser stacks.

According to a separate announcement from RWE, the commissioning of the two electrolyser systems is planned for 2024 and 2025, respectively.

JOHN COCKERILL

Belgian mechanical engineering specialist John Cockerill reported a single electrolyser order in the first quarter of 2023 but it was a large one. It said in early February that it signed a deal with India’s Greenko Group for the supply of 28 units of 5-MW alkaline electrolysers totalling 140 MW. These will be deployed for a 300-tonnes-per-day green ammonia plant in Una, Himachal Pradesh, that is being developed jointly by the two parties.

The electrolysers are supposed to be delivered next March so that the plant can be commissioned by June 2024.

Since March 2022, John Cockerill and Greenko have had a strategic partnership agreement to collaborate on projects supporting the creation of a green hydrogen ecosystem in India, including the joint development of a 2-GW electrolyser factory in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh. The 140-MW electrolyser order takes place within the framework of that deal.

METACON

Swedish energy technology company Metacon AB started the year with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Regional Directorate of State Forests (RDSF) in Katowice, Poland, in preparation for the awarding of a USD-5.8-million contract to supply a turnkey electrolyser system of up to 5 MW. The plan is to install and link the system to a proposed solar photovoltaic (PV) plant in the Katowice area as part of RDSF’s “Forest of Energy” project targeting the construction of several green hydrogen production facilities to support emission-free public transport. Hydrogen production is expected to begin in early 2024.

At the end of February, Metacon also unveiled it will supply an integrated 1-MW PEM electrolyser and hydrogen refuelling station (HRS) in Slovakia with a capacity of 400 kg per day. The company will execute this order for an unnamed client through its distribution and EPC partner Hydroholding. The total contract value for Metacon is estimated at EUR 3.9 million. Completion of the deployment is expected in early 2024.

NEL

Norway’s Nel ASA announced a couple of large electrolyser supply orders in the first quarter of 2023. The company started the year by unveiling the name of the customer behind a previously-disclosed order for 40 MW of alkaline electrolyser stacks. That customer turned out to be Statkraft with whom Nel will work together to establish a green hydrogen value chain in Norway.

A month later, Nel said it had signed a EUR-12-million firm contract for the supply of 40 MW of equipment to HyCC BV for its H2eron project in Delfzijl, Netherlands. The hydrogen produced by this plant will be used by SkyNRG to make sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from industrial byproducts and residue streams. The project developers anticipate a final investment decision (FID) next year and Nel expects to begin production under this order in the final quarter of 2025.

In March, the company announced that its unit Nel Hydrogen Electrolyser AS had signed a EUR-34-million firm contract for the supply of 120 MW of alkaline electrolysers to German green energy company HH2E AG for a project in Lubmin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Meanwhile, Nel’s fourth-quarter financial report showed that the company had a record-high order backlog of NOK 2.613 billion at the end of December 2023, with electrolysers accounting for 85% of it.

NUCERA

The electrolysis technology joint venture of German industrial conglomerate Thyssenkrupp AG and Italy's Industrie De Nora SpA, namely thyssenkrupp nucera, agreed in February to reserve 20 MW of production capacity for alkaline water electrolysis modules to the benefit of an unnamed customer in Europe. Nucera said that this is the first time a company has chosen to use its offer to reserve production capacities.

The following month, the company signed a MoU with Brazilian chemical company Unigel for the second phase of a project in the state of Bahia that will eventually reach 240 MW. For the project’s first phase, Nucera will deliver 60 MW by the end of the current year.

Unigel’s CEO Roberto Noronha Santos noted that a portion of the output of the plant in Bahia will be used in the company’s own supply chain and the rest will be offered to customers in the steel industry, as well as to oil refineries and ammonia producers.

PLUG POWER

The first three months of the year for Plug Power Inc were characterised by an electrolyser stack production record, but the company also disclosed in March the signing of an important deal with Uniper SE. The German energy company has picked Plug to design the electrolyser technology for the H2Maasvlakte project at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. More specifically, Plug will supply 10 pre-fabricated PEM electrolyser arrays once Uniper takes the FID. The plan is to have 100 MW of electrolysis capacity installed by 2026 and to expand the hub to 500 MW by 2030 at the latest.

After the end of the quarter, Plug unveiled it had manufactured 122 MW of its 1-MW electrolyser stacks in January-March 2023, which is an all-time high for the company. It is on track to ramp up the production capacity of its 2.5-GW Rochester gigafactory to 100 MW per month this quarter.

SIEMENS ENERGY

Siemens Energy has a lot to boast about when it comes to first-quarter electrolyser deals. The company said at the very start of March that it got chosen by Danish energy major Ørsted A/S to provide a technology package of four PEM electrolysers totalling 70 MW, plant-wide electrification and automation systems, as well as the entire power distribution and compressor systems for the FlagshipONE e-fuels project in the Swedish coastal town of Ornskoldsvik. Ørsted took a FID for this project in December and hopes to have it up and running in 2025. The facility will have the capacity to produce up to 50,000 tonnes of e-methanol per year.

More importantly, however, Siemens Energy unveiled that electrofuels specialist HIF Global had selected its technology for a massive 1.8-GW installation in Matagorda County, Texas. The deal announced in March enables Siemens Energy to expand its electrolyser production capacity beyond its previously announced plans, it said.

At the time, the two companies were engaged in front-end engineering and design for 1.8 GW of Silyzer 300 PEM electrolysers capable of producing about 300,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year.

“The agreement with Siemens Energy allows for electrolyzer deliveries which could support the start of construction as early as the first part of 2024 for the HIF Matagorda eFuels Facility,” commented Cesar Norton, CEO of HIF Global.

STIESDAL

As a newby in this field, Danish firm Stiesdal A/S was more modest in terms of electrolyser announcements in the first quarter of the year. Its compatriot European Energy A/S said in late March it had contracted Stiesdal Hydrogen to supply and test a new 3-MW alkaline electrolyser at a 12-MW Power-to-X (PtX) facility in Maade, Esbjerg.

Stiesdal will provide the first generation of its HydroGen Electrolyzer for this project. It will have the capacity to produce about 270 tonnes of hydrogen annually once fully operational later this year.

SUNFIRE

Last but not least comes Dresden-based Sunfire GmbH which announced at the end of January it had been commissioned to build a 30-MW pressurised alkaline electrolysis plant as part of the so-called Project Air in Sweden. The scheme is a collaboration between speciality chemicals producer Perstorp Group and German energy company Uniper SE. The FID was not yet taken at the time of the announcement.