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88 GREEN HYDROGEN COST REDUCTION Stage 1: Market establishment Manufacturing scale: At this stage, the market is still concentrated in the hands of a few players. Most of them are in the MWscale, still using manual assembly and relying on individual projects to adjust production. Most manufacturers are in a stalemate situation where funding and investment is needed to expand capacity, but project capacities cannot be met with such a small manufacturing capacity. The leading manufacturers are starting to expand capacity in anticipation of future growth and starting to discover some of the economies of scale. Companies that produce chlor-alkali have a head start for water electrolysis, given that a large part of the supply chain can be used as a springboard. Module size: Modules are relatively small, with most of the options available in the market in the MWscale. Projects that target 10, 20, 30MW are mostly numbering up smaller electrolysers and the balance of plant is not fully optimised. These small modules are ideal for onsite hydrogen generation in refuelling stations, which matches the relatively small requirements of transport applications, avoids infrastructure development and scales much better than fossilbased hydrogen production. Several manufacturers are starting to envision 100MW+ designs, but no experience of this creates a gap between engineering and reality to be closed in subsequent stages. Learning-by-doing: There is limited experience in water electrolysis and most of the lessons are drawn from chlor-alkali. Water electrolysis is being deployed in multiple new applications by multiple manufacturers, which creates custom designs that need to be adjusted before being used in another system. These demonstration and firstofakind plants still have a large cost associated to engineering and installation – and potentially with planning and execution delays. On the positive side, the learning rates are the highest at this stage, since there are multiple opportunities for optimisation. R&D: Research done at this stage has the highest benefits, since the technology is at the earliest stage of development. The areas to focus on for alkaline electrolysers are: the current density (to achieve higher production rates); the diaphragm thickness (to achieve higher efficiencies and lower costs); and the design of the electrodes and catalysts. For PEM, the largest cost contribution and potential for reduction comes from the bipolar plates (which provide mechanical support and distribute the flow) and the PTL (which facilitates the mass transport of reactants). Fundamental research on AEM membranes could potentially deliver great benefits in subsequent stages, if a breakthrough is achieved. Similarly, research on lifetime and electrolyte conductivity for solid oxide could unlock a step change in electrolyser performance in the next stage. At this stage, not all companies are familiar with hydrogen and government support is needed to deploy demonstration projects that either provide the bridge between lab and commercial scale, or showcase applications that have been deployed elsewhere with different local conditions. Stage 2: Scaling up and improving design Manufacturing scale: The project pipeline is growing quickly, and manufacturing capacity needs to be expanded to support such growth. The largest players are benefiting from economies of scale, reaching the 1 GW/year mark and beyond. This enables a 60%-70% cost reduction in the stack, compared to a MW-scale. Assembly goes from a manual to a semi or fully automated process. Production becomes much more efficient with less wasted materials. Cost contribution from items such as buildings and capital in machinery becomes progressively a smaller share of the total manufacturing cost. Yet, these developments are not widespread and players who take the lead incur a higher risk, with the higher pay out of achieving scale first and a lower manufacturing cost.PDF Image | GREEN HYDROGEN SCALING UP ELECTROLYSERS
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