Member Info for toneman

JulesK, magnificently ironic, using such a quote from an oil tycoon on a green hydrogen forum. Brilliant, I love it.

I don't disagree with you Bilbo, but I'd still rather have Linde as a sales arm of ITM rather than a competitor, which is what they were before last October. That's a massive swing in ITMs favour and could really patch up their weak area.

Funny...looks like Static was out out by three hours almost symmetrically either side of his time-slot. :-)

This sort of output from Align Research shouldn't even be allowed to be called research. I've read the research they quoted from First Berlin which I hope underestimates the successful outcome we all desire from ITM. Their analysis only seems to allow for the 1GW factory to be at 30% capacity in 5 years. I'm not saying they're wrong necessarily, but I'd consider it an epic fail if that was all that was achieved in 5 years. Anyway it explains why their share price expectation is about one third the current SP. The current SP is probably slightly ahead of forecast against a full factory on current timelines...by about 25% by my reckoning. But still, anyone wanting to take a new position in ITM based on a 5 year projection will still be happy to pay 300p today because they're probably expecting >1200p from 2025...after all why wouldn't you, that's minimum 33% compound for 5 years.

Always worth reading the small print too. From the bottom of their research post...

"EQTEC is a research client of Align Research. Align Research & director of Align Research own shares in EQTEC and is bound to Align Research’s company dealing policy ensuring open and adequate disclosure."

To be fair, according to HL, SP at 13.00 was 298, so Static was pretty close.

Ok. Found it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-28/company-with-291-gain-this-year-could-be-key-to-eu-green-goals

Agreed OB. Would prefer to stick to ITM topic. Can you provide a link to the Bloomberg article...or was it on TV?

Tysonfury123, I think you hit the nail on the head, there are thousands of companies for investors to choose from (not limiting to hydrogen) so picking "the one", as you put it, is perhaps a little unrealistic given that none of us have a cast iron guarantee over a company's prospects or future outcome. Given that none of us on this board are authorised/approved to give you such advice or guarantee, you're still going to have to follow up some of the ideas thrown in and research them to draw your own conclusion.

That said, here are the things I like about some of the companies I've mentioned before...
Ballard Power - They have trials through several bus manufactures in many countries and have recently joined up with H2Bus to try and crack UK market with Wrightbus (Bamford). They are well established and I believe that once designed in to a particular bus it is likely they will remain the 'engine' for that bus into full production.
Nel - In the same market area with ITM which has huge potential. In addition they are more experienced (quantity at least) in Hydrogen Fuel Station delivery and have the contract with Nikola to roll out across the USA.
Plug Power - Have a proven forklift and fuel supply solution for warehouses and I am hopeful that they move into the airport support vehicle space with a similar solution for tugs, tractors and cargo lifters.
PHE - I like the idea of turning car tyres into hydrogen. It may not be considered 100% green, but it is recycling and gives a second purpose to something that would otherwise either be landfill or difficult to dispose of.
Ceres - their Steel Cell technology is probably a little cheaper to manufacture than traditional fuel cells, although I imagine are going to be heavier as a result, but then could be ideally suited to static generation in combined heat and power (CHP) applications.

Outside of the specific hydrogen sector, but still in clean energy, I like both Orsted and Vestas Wind for being dominant in wind farms and wind turbines respectively.

So asking for 'best bets' as you did, I believe those are the best bets for ** MY ** portfolio (plus ITM for all the reasons you can read about in this forum), but make up your own mind for what's best for YOUR portfolio.

...furthermore, the green hydrogen produced is only green if the electricity is green, so for anyone considering the broader knock-on investment opportunities, for every 1GW of electrolysers installed would typically need 2GW of additional windfarms or 3GW additional solar farms to produce the extra electricity required.

Prof, from the podcast...1% of a single refinery demand is 10MW (current REFHYNE project) so 100% of that refinery's demand would be 1GW, i.e. a full year's production.

Shell has 35 refineries worldwide so if they all partially decarbonised to use, say, 10% green hydrogen (each one 100MW) then it would be 3.5 years production.

This is why the scale of the opportunity for ITM is so huge.

If you look at almost any single opportunity choosing from bus fleets, haulage fleets, cars, steel production, refineries, cement production, fertilizer production, electricity grid balancing (energy storage), or decarbonising the gas grid, any one of those can keep a 1GW factory in full production for 5-10 years. If multiple opportunities take off then ITM will have to build another 2 or 3 factories.

This podcast was mentioned in the Sunday Times comments section under Ian Cowie's article at the weekend. The episode "Scaling up green hydrogen with ITM Power" is an interview with Graeme Cooley. I think it's worth a listen even though it is 8 months old.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/everything-about-hydrogen-an-inspiratia-podcast/id1475783473

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/scaling-up-green-hydrogen-itm-power-graeme-cooleys/id1475783473?i=1000448375224

We've considered potential demand numbers before on this forum with the conclusion that there's enough current global hydrogen use to keep a 1GW factory at full capacity for decades if even a modest percentage of it went from brown to green.

In reality, how does a factory scale up? There is already a target to be at full capacity in about 5 years. Let's assume we can grow exponentially over 5 years (60MW, 120MW, 240MW, 480MW, 960MW). The recent RNSs give us...

20MW (10 x 2MW) for Australia
8MW (4 x 2MW) Funding Award
20MW (4 x 5MW) Gigastack Phase 2
8MW estimated 4 x 2MW for ongoing Shell refuelling stations.
(Total 56MW)

...so that already nearly completes the first year of the growth model. Linde should be developing industrial opportunities through their worldwide network of customers so we only need a couple of 2MW orders from them to complete the first year.

Obviously the next 12 months need to see additional orders around 120MW, then 240MW, 480MW and so on. Those latter years are certainly going to have to come from something more than trials and feasibility studies. Hopefully all the global trials and demonstrations will be successfully concluded by then and we can get some repeat orders from those real-world customers.

operastar, regarding the Times/Sunday Times, I can recommend signing up for their two free articles per week. That's what I do and it's enough to catch up with the Ian Cowie column each week. Here's a link to this week's column (one with ITM) in case you want to try the free subscription method.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/out-of-the-blue-how-my-stake-in-a-green-future-is-gaining-ground-fg7r3n3z6

Sorry Bilbo, you beat me to it.

dsc1978, not having a specific rns is not the same thing as no news. ITM was the main focus of Ian Cowie's weekly article in the Sunday Times and in general hydrogen and clean energy is all over the news where it matters.

bilboburgler, are we expecting a trading update at the end of this week...or possibly sometime next week?

It appears to me that Coronavirus has certainly given plenty of people another reason to explain why their view of the new world order must now be the right one. They're popping up everywhere in the media to explain why due to "spending too little", "spending too much", "not being prepared", "not enough healthcare", "too rich", "too poor", "too much capitalism", etc, all means that their campaign for "new politics", "new industry", "new finance", "new economy", "new energy", "new democracy", "new travel", whatever they're campaigning for is obviously now the right way. Perhaps the conclusion is 'We haven't changed one bit'.

13thmonkey, yes I've looked at various flow battery systems. They're certainly a good battery implementation. I'm just not a big fan of battery technology for solving this particular problem as (in my opinion) it's more challenging for scalability and its storage is not mobile. If you want to store more with a battery you have to buy/build another battery. If you want to use the energy from the battery you have to wait for a good time to release it into the grid. Additional Hydrogen storage can include adding another storage tank or even loading it onto a tube trailer and delivering it to someone with a demand for green hydrogen - even export overseas.

Tyson, check out this website https://gridwatch.co.uk/ to get a graphical view of how good wind really is. It shows live and historical graphs of all our electricity generation. Even though it's still early days for wind farms, in the UK we're already generating on average about the same as nuclear. As I write this (Sunday 9.55am), from their live data, wind is the single largest contributor to our grid at 8.5GW, nuclear is second at 5.7GW, gas is third at 3.8GW. Demand is low right now, and if it increases through the day then they'll increase gas power to compensate.

Companies with a green energy theme that I think are worth researching...
Hydrogen Generators: ITM; Nel (Norway); Powerhouse Energy (UK)
Fuel Cell: Ballard Power (Canada); Ceres Power (UK); Plug Power (USA); Power Cell (Sweden); Proton Motor Power (UK/Germany)
Wind Power: Vestas (Denmark); Orsted (Denmark); Siemens Gamesa (Spain)
Large Companies with a finger in the pie: General Electric (USA); Johnson Matthey (UK); Siemens (Germany)

It's a big topic with hundreds of companies but the above are some of my favourites, but not all have good share histories, so as with all 'recommendations' the standard caveat applies - do your own research.