2min chapter

Catalyst with Shayle Kann cover image

What’s holding up hydrogen in Europe?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann

CHAPTER

Choosing the Right Electrolyzer Technology for Your End Use

It's early innings, clearly, in electrolyzer manufacturing. And so it sort of remains to be seen how the market dynamic is going to play out in terms of where manufacturing takes place. Solid oxide and economic gains from integrating solid oxide with refineries are also a good reason why it won't go totally the way of solar. These choose the right technology for your end use - efficiency matters.

00:00
Speaker 2
I think the balance of plant also, I mean, the other thing to, your speaking my language here, the other thing to understand is that the stack is not the entire system. The rest of the cost of the rest of the system, the balance of plant can swamp the cost of the stack if the stack isn't designed well and if the system isn't designed well. And so you can end up with a situation where like, sure, maybe you end up mass manufacturing electrolyzer stacks that look a similar way and are cheap if you're looking at them in a vacuum. But then the cost of the total electrolyzer system ends up ballooning as a result. And so they don't end up being as cheap as you think they're going to be when you look at the fully loaded cost of the system. With that said, it's early innings, clearly, in electrolyzer manufacturing. And so it sort of remains to be seen how the market dynamic is going to play out in terms of where manufacturing takes place. Who does the manufacturing? To what degree does one technology dominate at the end of the day as has happened for the most part in solar with crystalline silicon? Or do we end up with a more diverse landscape of some alkaline electrolyzer, some PAM electrolyzer, some AEM electrolyzer, some who knows what else, right? And this much more dynamic ecosystem in the long term.
Speaker 1
Yeah, don't forget solid oxide. Solid oxide, right? Yeah, I've been looking also at solid oxide and economic. And this is also, I think, a good reason why it won't go totally the way of solar, at least it is a good reason to believe that because the efficiency gains from integrating solid oxide with refineries, with steelmaking, we've just seen sun fires say that they've reached 84% lower heating value efficiency by integrating their solid oxide electrolyzer at the South's Gitter, a South's Gitter, clean steel plant. Those are, you know, in a business where actually 75% of your levelized cost is down to your electricity cost and natural K-PEX, then these things matter, efficiency matters. And these choose the right technology for your end use is what I'm saying. Right, I mean, that's another key point, right?

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