Member Info for toneman

Unfortunately our government finance departments often seem to take an all-or-nothing approach. If you need a handout the strings attached often restrict how much you're allowed to generate yourself. They don't seem to like you benefiting directly from their assistance. We saw it very recently with furlough where the government was happy to pay wages as long as you did absolutely no work, not even replying to work emails from home. Many businesses were crying out for just a little help because they just didn't have quite enough work for full-time. Instead they were 'forced' to furlough and get no productive work. We see it with wind where they pay twice the price of equivalent electricity as long as you generate nothing at all. As far as incentive payments is concerned I can't help but think a better win-win would be to pay them just the normal price for the electricity they're generating as long as they actually produce it and do something else with it, like electrolysis or battery storage, rather than feed it into the grid. I'm sure you can sell hydrogen for more than the price of electricity, so even after efficiency losses I bet the overall result for windfarms would be better than today...and for half the cost to the tax-payer.

Perhaps the justification from Linde and others lies in the fact that there is not currently sufficient renewable-generated electricity available that would drive all the electrolysers that would be required to meet even current H2 demand. If the electricity isn't green then the hydrogen produced by the electrolyser isn't green.

I think that's why quite a lot of the projects we see (other than small-scale demonstrator projects) are partnered with either a new proposed wind farm or solar array, or even just a dedicated individual turbine.

I don't think this picture is going to change much until we start reaching very large levels of intermittent over-supply from wind and solar, which is probably going to be nearer the tail-end of this decade. I don't see the facts around generation likely to change, that being you have to closely match generation with demand. If you can't increase demand then you have to turn off some generation. In the UK the current priority is to switch off coal, then turn down gas, then start to curtail wind. The recent comments from KK suggests that even the UK government are starting to recognise that curtailment payments to wind farms are unacceptable when you could at least produce something from that energy, specifically hydrogen, rather than waste its potential.

Blue hydrogen may justifiably fill a short term gap, but in order to meet fully renewable electricity demands we will have to over-build solar and wind capacity by some margin in order to achieve the average required supply. You can either keep chopping off the peaks through curtailment and ignore that energy, or store that energy as molecules for some additional benefit. I believe once that becomes the natural process of energy management then it will be scaled massively. Its the obvious choice because the market for the hydrogen produced is easy to see and, as previously discussed, batteries can't do the same job at that scale (for wind). That way, once green hydrogen is produced at scale then blue hydrogen production ought to tail-off as people start to recognise its hidden/ignored costs.

I just hope I live long enough to see it play out in my favour. It's going to be a long bumpy ride.

https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/northwest/news/2084160-world-first-as-100-hydrogen-fired-at-pilkington-glass-plant

Bilbs, you might still be able to watch it through their presentation link...the factory tour as just over 25 minutes through.

The electrolyser plates are all handled by large robots.

https://channel.royalcast.com/hegnarmedia/#!/hegnarmedia/20210819_2

Watching Nels Q2 presentation this morning. They gave a video tour of their new production facility. 500MW, with expansion up to 2GW. Very interesting how much automation they've built into it. It should be operational during Q3 with official opening in Q1 2022. Important to see they are still so optimistic for the future size of orders. Bodes well for ITM future orders too.

TheT, I broadly accept what you're saying, but I should clarify my point about the government's distinction between green and blue. They can easily meet their 2050 targets using blue. The reason is simple - they can manipulate the grams CO2 to make blue hydrogen low enough that the remainder can be offset. It's net zero of course, not actual zero. So as long as you can calculate the difference away then as far as any government is concerned it's 'target met'.

The other point is one you've already made which is that it's decades of infrastructure in renewables and electrolysers before green hydrogen takes a significant piece of the pie. If governments don't feel strongly enough that they need it for 2050 then it's up to the market and we could be in for a tedious drag if government incentives don't help us out a little. Fortunately we don't just have to look at our government. It's a worldwide issue and ITM do take a worldwide view, even if we don't quite have the orders yet to show it. I don't quite share Bilbs pessimism that the factory isn't filling, but we only need wait another 24 months before the picture should be crystal clear. I'm happy to wait, because I think it's coming.

TheT, the problem with being "predominantly in the hands of the UK govt" is they have already said they're not taking sides and going to let the market decide. Be under no illusion, they have absolutely swallowed the 'blue' hydrogen from CCS story. They effectively see no difference between 'clean' hydrogen and green hydrogen. That's why they're setting benchmarks for defining clean hydrogen in terms of grams of CO2. They'll set an easy to reach target in order to 'guarantee' that 'clean' blue hydrogen is achievable with little effort. It won't take onboard the future cost of storage or the cost of the inevitable leaks.

Much as I am willing to give ITM the benefit of the doubt for now, in comparison with the expansion plans and order go-getting of Plug Power it really is chalk and cheese. If ITM really had the balls they'd already know where the second factory needs to be, they have the money for it, and it would be one hell of a statement to just go and build it and start ramming it full of orders. Odd thing is it would have a very negative effect on the share price. But the point is, go and build a second 2GW factory in Australia, build a massive solar farm, make your own hydrogen and also sell electrolysers, win, win, win.

According to the Sunday Telegraph.

My mother always said "Just because your friend jumps off a bridge doesn't mean you should too".

From my point of view there are a lot of shortcomings with battery EVs that people should just accept rather than attempt to solve with half-baked 'solutions'. If you can charge from home and, on occasion, are happy to wait at a supercharger then buy an EV. On street charging with cables lying everywhere so that everyone can buy one is not a good solution. Those people need an alternative quick refuelling choice. Many people (not me) are confident that 10 minute recharge will be possible in the future, so why burden all streets with all-ready-out-of-date slow charging facilities. My view is that H2 will ultimately be the preferred solution for those people and that scenario also leads to the conclusion to not burden all streets with all-ready-out-of-date slow charging facilities. One of those options will play out in the next 10 years so, logically, there is absolutely no need to populate the entire street network with slow chargers and trailing cables.

Hard to believe MPs and others are so complacent over installing these trip hazards all across our city streets. Even the picture of the Renault in the article has the excess cable coiled up under the vehicle. Are all future users going to be that neat and tidy and courteous? I don't think so...especially when the cable's all wet and grimy from previous uses. I wish someone would stop this nightmare progressing further and just implement the cheaper option of forecourt garages with hydrogen refuelling.

Amazing. PLUG started the day up 10%. Ended flat at -0.4%. I guess people are waiting for the actual future to play out rather than take a punt on the company's forecasts. Feels like the same is happening across all the hydrogen stocks...ITM included. Ah well, their loss I suppose.

So in last night's Plug Power earnings call there were a few interesting points...

They said they had an electrolyser sales funnel of $2bn.
They are in discussion with customers looking for sites as large as 1GW, worth in the region of $500m-$600m.
They expect Plug Power's electrolyser business to be worth at least $150m next year.
Based on a 7-10 day visit to Europe, with David Bow, they booked $30m of business for next year.
(David Bow was previously at Nel and now runs Plug Power's electrolyser business).

https://www.ir.plugpower.com/Financial-Information/Quarterly-Results/default.aspx
https://event.webcasts.com/viewer/event.jsp?ei=1480056&tp_key=2ad12c1cde

Jeremy Clarkson is on our side...I think...probably. Anyway there are a couple of ITM refuelling images in the piece, so that's all good then.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-clarkson-review-toyota-mirai-b73x596f6

You can subscribe to two free articles a week if you don't already have access.

No problem NGR1616. Understood.

NGR1616, your interpretation of the trades is wrong. Each recorded trade is one side of the trade. When you sell your sell trade is posted at your quantity and your price, when someone buys your shares their buy transaction is posted at their quantity and their price. The buy or sell is sometimes wrong because it is interpreted by a computer algorithm using your price and the spread at the time the computer makes its guess. For some reason the computer guess just happens to be wrong...it's most definitely NOT the other side of the trade.

I've had long held doubts about this company because of their particular licensing approach. I've nothing against licensing or franchise models, but it seems the successful ones build their own proof of concept or FOAK themselves and then go on to license to others. PHE seems to think they could shortcut that step and instead outsource the FOAK build. They might be regretting that now as it's clear they have zero control over what is a crucial element for the business startup. Still holding as I'm a big fan of the technology so I hope PHE can eventually pull this off, but I wish they'd done it differently from the start.

That's correct Tennents. It was June 2019. They traced it down to a third party valve or seal, I think, that had been either manufactured or assembled incorrectly. The one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that there will be more incidents to come, and I would be surprised if Linde and ITM are immune to that. Just hope we survive, learn and improve.

https://nelhydrogen.com/press-release/press-release-update-regarding-incident-at-kjorbo/

Ouch. The problem with energy storage is there's lots of energy involved. Sadly we're going to get similar issues with hydrogen storage. Over time we'll learn how to minimise this both for lithium and H2, but there's going to be 'teething' troubles ahead for sure.

Surely by the time you're scraping the barrel for ideas how to get battery trucks to go the distance you should recognise you're chasing the wrong solution. Absolutely ridiculous idea to clutter all our roads with catenary wires to charge trucks on the move. Totally unnecessary. Even though it does work technically, it should still be added to the 'bad ideas' pile. Hate it.

https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2021/07/27/costain-to-lead-electric-road-trial-for-hgv-charging/

Just a reminder, it'll be an ITM electrolyser that generates the hydrogen for this boat (order received back in January).

https://www.offshore-energy.biz/worlds-1st-hydrogen-powered-ferry-delivered/