Sunfire

Machinery company Yuchai expects mass production by the end of 2022, targeting tractors and other heavy commercial vehicles in mountainous or plateau areas. Sunfire is installing a 2.6 MW high-temperature electrolyzer at Neste’s renewable products refinery in Rotterdam, with commissioning expected in early 2023. Meanwhile, hydrogen-based projects in the mobility and transportation sectors are taking off in France, Czech Republic, and the UK.

Falling electrolyzer costs driven by economies of scale, increased automation of production and the modularity of such systems will bring green hydrogen to a competitive cost with its fossil-fuel powered variants in a dozen markets by 2030, according to WoodMac.

The leading industrial electrolyzer maker is planning to expand its alkaline electrolysis business with the construction of a large-scale production site in Germany that will have an annual manufacturing capacity of 500 MW by 2023, with a further extension to gigawatt-scale already in the planning.

Corporate power purchase agreements and the combination of PV plants with hydrogen production open up new medium-term financing opportunities for solar projects, as was demonstrated at the fourth session of the pv magazine Roundtable Europe event. The evolution of corporate deals may have been slowed by current price developments but hydrogen may come sooner than many had predicted.