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It's no problem for FCEV though...unless it coincides with your weekly 5 minute refill (N.B. fossil refill would be affected same as hydrogen unless you're carrying your own spare fossil-fuel can).

Hi Sharesport, my question was more to do with the number of buys suddenly coming to an end. Last month there was a £135000 sell order which was easily matched with enough buy orders over a 2-3 day period. As soon as the big sell was fulfilled the buying dried up too. The price has hardly changed, in fact it's arguably a better buying price now, but those buys adding up to £40k-£50k per day didn't resume. I know the market-makers are very good at their job, but it still seems a massive coincidence that the buying and selling came to an abrupt stop at the same time. I'm probably just reading too much into it. I'm still holding hydrogen stock for the long term...it's the only clean, green, long term alternative to fossil in my opinion.

A couple of weeks ago there was a large sell order going through and the MMs reduced the price to just below 30p and attracted loads of buyers. As soon as the sell order was fulfilled all the buyers seemed to disappear even though the price was still attractive under 30p. I'm not a great believer in coincidence, so why did the hundreds of buyers suddenly dry up? Is it that actually seeing the large sell order, being finally presented on the trading list, simply scares off further buyers?

Aside from the headline error, that forecast is hugely underwhelming. Less than double the market size by 2026 would suggest quite poor adoption. I would have hoped that by then renewable energy sources would be built hand-in-hand with energy storage (which should be hydrogen not batteries) and that fuel cell buses, trucks and trains would be more than a trickle. If all that is only double what we see today then you'd say it still hasn't taken off. These early years should really be annual growth more like 25-50% not 9%.

MIKECC, using a basic formula I=C(dv)/(dt) I calculate that draining 50A continuously from a capacitor for 1 hour and starting from 12V discharging down to 8V to mimic a starter battery (50Ah, 12V) would require a 45000 Farad capacitor. I've scaled that up to consider vehicle storage with values like 300 Volts discharging to 252V, 4 hours at 50 Amps and it would require 15000 Farads...what, but that's only one third the capacity of the 12V version...wtf?

Drawing a constant current from a capacitor results in the voltage dropping at a constant rate. In the second example I'm allowing the voltage to drop 12 times further, which ordinarily would take 12 times longer, but to last 4 times longer instead only takes one third the capacitance. It should be noted that it would have taken 25 hours to charge up the capacitor to 300V at 50 Amps in the first place, whereas the 12V example would have charged up to 12V in only 3 hours at 50 Amps. Using the original capacitance of 45000 Farads would hold the voltage to 288-300V for 3 hours drawing 50A, but would take 3 days to charge to 300V at 50A (or 12.5 hrs at 300 Amps).

btw, I'm prone to silly calculation errors, so let me know if there's something fundamentally bone-headed about the above.

They've got two refueling stations already, one supplied by Hydrogenics the other by BOC. I'm pretty sure I remember ITM being involved in the initial demonstration phase of the project but they didn't get the contract to build and supply...not sure why.

In my long-held opinion, you're spot on Seaangler. For me it's the elephant in the room for EVs and the mainstream either doesn't see it or is ignoring it hoping it will go away. It makes me laugh when people say that Hydrogen just isn't ready, and yet they don't acknowledge that batteries and fast charging isn't ready either. They're still trying to develop higher power charger stations (as if 150kW isn't dangerous enough already). 350kW is going to require liquid cooled cables. Battery chemistry still doesn't like to charge that fast when either too flat or too full. As you rightly point out, 30 minute refills are going to require acres of charge points. And the batteries are just too damn heavy and expensive which is limiting most producers to 200-250 mile range. For my money hydrogen solves all this (except cost) as well as being the only solution for trains, trucks, buses, windfarm/solar storage, home heating, ships, (and possibly planes).

They have recognised that dead batteries will be a problem in the future which is why there are a host of second-life proposals...but to me that sounds like simply kicking the problem into the long grass. Recycling batteries is going to be more expensive than manufacturing from fresh raw materials and that cost isn't factored into the current vehicles either.

To me pure Lithium Battery EVs are the fluorescent bulb of the car market and FCEVs are the LED bulb, and many governments are in danger of backing the wrong one at this stage in both their developments, like they did with the dim, slow-to-start, fluorescent bulbs a couple of decades ago.

It may also be worth a mention that FC is not only a transport solution it is a potentially widespread static power producer. To work effectively wind/solar/tidal is going to need massive storage and hydrogen gives potential long term storage where battery technology is quite a poor solution. That hydrogen is going to have to be used either through burning or FC. Where this may not be so helpful to those of us with only a maximum 20-30 year term is that this usage case is probably more like 30-50 year scale-up.

Hi testpack3
I agree with most of your reasoning, but I should make one minor correction to my earlier post and your subsequent reply. I didn't say all ICE vehicles, but I did say all engines and should have clarified that I meant all large engines (which are predominantly diesel). Smaller ICE vehicles are likely to remain battery EV following the current development path. Buses, trains, trucks and ships I suggest will all go FC.
I also agree that the larger FC mfrs is a potential problem for minority shareholders of PPS, but my bet is that the market is large enough that plenty of engine replacement customers will seek purchase/partner/license with PPS because it does at least have a proven solution. Even a small slice of this market in 10-15 years is still massive.

I think that's been marked up wrong by the computer. I believe that's a big SELL not a buy. The price has been marked up against today's close which isn't relevant. Anyway the big sell quantity now at least broadly matches up with the large amount of buying recorded yesterday and on into today. It shows that demand is still very strong so hopefully it'll push back up to 34p relatively swiftly.

Hi testpack3

Your analysis makes a lot of sense based on your stated assumptions. And you are suggesting that your assumptions are on the optimistic side (5000% uplift), but if hydrogen fuel cells take off the way they should and fundamentally replace all fossil engines then it's way bigger than even your optimistic numbers. Take even one engine manufacturer like Cummins, for example, their market cap is £20bn. They and others are going to have to turn to Proton, Ballard and others to purchase or license the fuel cell technology to replace all fossil engines eventually. I'm not sure how to calculate it, but Proton's products and their IP must be worth considerably more than £100m. In 10-15 years I'd expect £100m of debt to be pretty insignificant. I might be wrong, of course.

Yesterday's buy volume outpaced sell volume by 3:1 yet resulted in major price fall. Today is broadly 1:1. The price movement has certainly brought action into what had become a little stagnant for a few days. Surely the MMs don't fiddle like this just to generate volume do they. If the result is higher proportion of buyers does that mean they're fulfilling some larger sell order that we don't see yet?
Is this a money-raising activity that funds/supports the loan/build news announced yesterday?

Nel Hydrogen shares took a bit hit this morning due to a fire and possible explosion at a refueling station in Kjorbo, Norway, yesterday evening. I wonder if this will knock onto ITM price once it is more widely reported. Nothing to do with ITM obviously...just a similar business activity.

I can't remember this forum revisiting the joint venture since it was announced in January...my apologies if I simply missed further posts. Anyway, the website for Clean Logistics GmbH is now live, although not much detail/news yet...understandably. At least it's broadly as expected, converting existing trucks to fuel-cell. Good decision I think.
The website is at www.cleanlogistics.de/en/

Now we're starting to see the results of last year's launch of fourth gen fuel cells from Proton. Today's announcement of letter of intent with Skoda Electric is a perfect fit...an established electric bus manufacturer taking advantage of the natural extension to extended range and short refueling using now well proven fuel cell technology. Smart move for both parties.

Just caught up with February edition "New Energy" magazine. They have a good cover-page article about hydrogen. Here's an interesting snippet regarding scale...

"In wesseling, a refinery city between Cologne and Bonn, construction of the world's largest PEM electrolyser, with a capacity of 10MW, is underway. From 2020, the EU-funded plant - which has an overall price tag of EUR 20 million - is to produce 1300 tonnes of hydrogen per year under the coordination of Shell and ITM Power. This will be an important, but nevertheless small step towards industrial-scale applications: the refinery uses no less than 180000 tonnes of H2 every year to produce petroleum products."

So it seems to make sense that ITM have been spending on developing larger and larger capacity units as we're only just scratching the surface.

However I hope they can monetise the developments or else we could develop larger and larger units ad infinitum.

60%+ sounds great. I've never seen any real-world figures, only ones stated on other forums and to be fair they're all very anti-FCEV and anti-H2 so I do hope they're wrong and you're right. I'm very pro-offshore wind and very pro-H2.

@Bilbo - I assume your post re: wind power efficiency was replying to my post.

The 50% efficiency I posted was not for wind efficiency, but instead that due to all the conversion processes you only get about 25-50% electricity out of the hydrogen made compared to the 100% electricity you started with (which some argue should go directly into the car).

Personally I agree with you in considering the inefficiencies of the current fossil fuel model. So I don't agree with other's arguments that BEV will beat FCEV because it is more efficient, I think FCEV will eventually beat BEV because it is more convenient and practical (and also the only solution for heavy transport).

It's hard to see what problem AFC are claiming they've solved. They claim a shortage of power generation to charge up our future 36m EVs (needing 8 nuclear power stations or 98 London Arrays) and claim they can provide the power from hydrogen as 100% green electricity. They're either suggesting they can generate hydrogen locally from the equivalent of 16 nuclear power stations or 196 London Arrays (conservative 50% efficiency assumed) or alternatively from a fully imported hydrogen source e.g. future Australian energy exports.

Everyone knows it takes more electrical energy from renewable sources to generate hydrogen than simply charging an EV directly from that source, so you can't solve a problem of high electricity demand with a solution that requires even higher electricity demand. We are definitely going to need more wind, solar, tidal, and imported energy to solve this one...and in my opinion Hydrogen is a good way to store the excess in periods of lower demand which is core ITM opportunity.

As they only announced the joint venture today I'd be surprised if there is already a website up and running...anyway I couldn't find one. But the CleanLogistik you found is for cleaning and managing pallets/containers for transportation (as far as I could understand) and nothing to do with building Hydrogen Fuel Cell Trucks which is what I believe the joint venture is all about...I suppose more like Nikola Motors but probably smaller trucks. The size is a bit hard to judge from their statement, they said "Heavy Duty Trucks" which would be typically over 10 tonnes but justified the market as over 5 tonnes. Either way it's a significant market.

They said the new company will develop, design, construct and sell trucks but I wonder whether develop/design/construct in their case really means "convert existing trucks" as EV conversion is what one of the other partners does. Currently none of the partners appears to design/build existing trucks. I guess it's not impossible to set up from scratch to design your first real-world truck, so we'll see which way they go. It sounds really positive to me if they can pull it off.