 Hey, Aloha and welcome to Stand in the Energy Man. I'm Stan Osserman, coming to you live and direct from the North Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii, as you can tell by the lava flows and the ocean in the background. And I've got co-hosting with me today, Paul Pontio, the guy in charge of all the engineering feats and magic with hydrogen here at Blue Planet Research here on the Big Island. And our guest today is Mr. Andy Belt from, and correct me if I'm saying this wrong, they make, go, I didn't get, I didn't get my education, right? So Geener and they make electrolyzers and have for many, many years, but have decided that they wanted to go commercial. They split their research hydrogen branch off into a commercial branch and they're growing like gangbusters. So Andy, thank you for being on the show today and I'm sorry we couldn't get you connected via the video, but we've got your picture up on the screen and why don't you introduce yourself a little bit and tell us a little bit about Geener. Hello freezing, but it's just great to be connected with Hawaii this evening. So I'm a South Londoner from the UK. I technology to convince the commercial market to work in several industries. The experience I've had professionally is working with Geener. Geener is just a great company. As you said, it's been in the hydrogen space, Geener, who was, he had the opportunity to start up his own business when Tycho decided they didn't want to continue doing research in fuel cells and electrolyzers. And he set up his own business here in this area in just outside Boston. Wolfam of the company was, was, was leading electro chemists from Geener. We still have one of them working with us today. Really the crown jewel of the Geener technologies has been, has been PEM and PEM Electron to join venture. It's maybe now over 15 years. There's a stacks around the world in the, in on-demand hydrogen generation for larger commercial stacks and to explore larger commercial electrolyzers. Opportunity in renewable energy. Geener here likes many major hydrogen through eventually to mobility applications. So it's just a really an amazing talk. That's, that's a great summary. And Yen, well, I was really impressed with talking to you was when you told me that you were contracted by the Navy to do electrolyzers for their submarines. I don't know if the viewers understand what kind of rigors you have to go through to get to that point where the Navy will actually put that equipment on a nuclear submarine. It's an incredible and very rigorous testing program that really says a lot for your company that the quality and the durability and everything that you need to put into a military contract, it meets the bill. In fact, we have a saying in the U.S. if it's close enough for government work. And we used to, today we think of that as not very good, but the original, when it was originally started as a saying, it actually meant the government had such tight specifications that if it was close enough for government work, it couldn't be any better. It was really tight specs. So you've obviously broken the code on that. That's, that's really important. And I've got Paul on the line here and I told him that you're working on a, on a pressurized off the stack electrolyzer. Could you, Paul, could you ask him some questions about that that you might think of? Sure. Yeah. First of all, what, what type of bar pressures are you achieving from this? I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to relay for you, Paul. He was saying what kind of pressure are you getting off the stack? Oh, oh, we, Paul, we can, we can run hydrogen pressure at the stack, on the stack. So imagine you've got, we've got oxygen coming off an ambient and we've got hydrogen coming off a 10,000 PSI, which is a remarkable thing. So we can, we want one of the few companies who can do that kind of differential pressure performance from, we are also developing straight technology. So the way, where you, where you, it's a very similar stat where you feed hydrogen in and taking going up to 10,000, 12,000 PSI. And when do you think that'll become economically viable to actually use that technology without going bankrupt, trying to build it or buy it? Real commercial markets in electrolysis, we don't think that's where the market is going to be, because you're right. The economic challenges of building a stack which can, can deal with those kinds of pressures are as safe as those kind of pressures. You need to really reinforce the hardware dramatically over a regular electrolyzer stack to be able to and you have to have a great the strength of the whole system makes you're doing, of building that into the stack of building that pressure into the stack output, come back at maybe 200 PSI or take it up to the level you'd like, say for a mobility application or putting it into the, into the tank of a car, in other words, or into a train or a boat. Typically, that's a more viable economic model. And we don't think that's going to show chemical compression technology though. That's kind of, that's an interesting technology. We haven't done the full techno economic analysis to, to exactly what the survivability. We're very interested in that though, whenever you speak to people who run filling stations, additional compresses to take hydrogen to very high pressures, that's the, they absolutely hate it. They, you know, that's, that's where they have to keep refitting them. They break down. It's really tough. So they, everyone is really keen to find a better solution. So we're very optimistic about our electrical chemical compression for commercial market. Yeah, you've got that right. Paul, if you have something else just brollard it out and I'll see it to Andy over the phone. Sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, it's incredibly impressive that they're getting differential pressures like that at 700 bar and above. I'd love to know how they seal their stacks to be able to do that. Secondly, I agree with them completely. Compression is the Achilles heel of the hydrogen industry. But what typically we've seen is the electrochemical compression tends to suffer on throughput. Whereas mechanical compression can keep up a little bit better. Ask him about the throughput capability. Yeah, he was, Paul was saying that between the electrochemical and the mechanical compression, the throughput capability is different. And if you guys have found that out in your research as well, and we both agree that the compression has been the Achilles heel of hydrogen dispensers forever and ever. It's just the one thing that we hear you can pressurize off the stack. And Paul says, how do you seal your stack? And you pretty much hit the nail on the head. We know it's kind of the tough spot to get by. But that's, you know, we have 30 plus years as you heard of experience in building electrolyzers, PEM electrolyzer stacks. And we have, we have the, we've pushed the limits of PEM technology stand further than anybody else in the world. So we've done more advanced technology programs, not just pressures, but lightweight technology for aerospace. We've done ultra technology, we've done very high temperature operation, but still the membrane in the, in the electrolyzer and the higher the temperature, the more efficient the electrolyzer is. So we have more experience of doing, of doing these extreme, extremes of operation, because we've been asked by NASA or asked by the Navy to, to really push the technical envelope. So there's no one in the world who knows more about how to make a, a, a world-class high performing stack than the GINA ELX. And that's critical for our market success, because the ability to, to use thinner membranes at one of higher temperatures, one of higher current densities, all those things ultimately are going to lead us to being the lowest cost provider in the market. The best stack leads to the best system, GINA ELX has the best systems. And ultimately, because of our performance capabilities, we will be able to offer the last one. And of course, at the end of the day, that's, that's really what is going to drive the market. The market is, is hungry for lower cost electrolysis so that we can really get moving. Another thing that we talked about a little bit earlier that seems to be really important, in my mind anyway, is the ability to go to gigawatt scale production of hydrogen so that we can use electrolyzers for grid. Here in Hawaii, we have a mandate to go to all renewable energy in our grid by 2045. And to make that happen, we need an incredible amount of energy storage to move the hydrogen or move the energy from one island to another. We've looked at cables, we've looked at all kinds of things, and batteries don't hack it. But hydrogen, either liquid hydrogen or ammonia would do it. And that gigawatt stack is really critical. Can you tell us a little bit about your work on the gigawatt scale? Yeah, sure. But let me just, actually what you said first, I mean, I think increasingly the world is recognizing that there's a critical place for hydrogen in energy storage and in as we switch to renewable energy in general worldwide, there's a critical role for hydrogen to play initially as a storage vehicle, and then of course also as a source of energy and energy applications directly. So there's an enormous market for hydrogen to be using electrolyzers. And at scale, scale our business, scale our manufacturing, the stacks themselves and the systems. So we launched last year or the end of 2019, we launched our megawatt stack. So our current workforce stack is about 150 kilowatts stack. And now we have the megawatt stack, which is a, we expect in a couple of years to be able to upgrade to a two megawatt stack. And then of course, we will be putting multiple stacks together to make five and 10 and 20 megawatt systems. And then these are modules, which can be combined to make absolutely enormous kind of multi-megawatt systems, industrial applications, such as ammonia, as you mentioned, also in the oil refining space, they use massive hydrogen, massive amounts of hydrogen. Hey, Andy, I'm going to interrupt for a second to ask Eric to throw up with a megawatt's image for us. Oh, great. Yeah, we're going to see if he can, if Eric can bring that image up. There we go. It's up on the screen now. So this is the megawatt scale, the image that you sent us, that Geener makes. That's exactly right. That's from our Allagash stack, that at the moment we're on the market with that as a one megawatt stack, but it's a platform that we will, as I said, expand to two megawatts in over a couple of years as we increase current density and add more cells to the stack. And so that's just the beginning. We put multiple stacks together in larger systems, and then we put multiple systems together for major installations. And we are getting inquiries now, routinely getting inquiries, not just for five megawatt, 10 megawatt, 20 megawatt systems, but for 100 megawatt systems, as a viable economic solution for major industrial applications, as I mentioned. The market is accelerating fast. It's so great that Hawaii has a commitment to be fully renewable by 2045. I think that happened about 2000. That was two or three years ago you made that commitment. About two years ago. Yeah. So today now 19 US states have made a commitment to be 100% renewable by 2040, 2045 in that range. And so there's real momentum behind and of course, also over in Europe, we're doing a great project with some friends, colleagues in closing down its major gas field because of earthquake activity. So they have great renewable great renewable supply of wind. And the key thing we're doing with the guys at Holland is we're actually integrating the turbine, the wind turbine together directly with the Pam electrolyzer. And that means we can operate everything more efficiently. We cost actually of the wind turbine and of our electrolyzer because there's some component where we can just operate the wind turbine more effectively. And what you have then is actually the wind turbine is basically a hydrogen turbine. That's the concept that we're working on there. We hope to be doing a year and should be about a two megawatt demonstration site. And that when that takes off, that's going to be absolutely huge. And we're going to be bringing the hype, if we do that offshore, we'll be putting in pipes stand. So that's part of the answer to this is going to be hydrogen pipelines. So that's what I'm working with another partner from Spain actually originally based in Spain, which has a project in California to do a renewable energy storage demonstration about it again, another two megawatt. And another project in Florida project with Orlando Utilities Commission and General Motors where we're doing another solar storage project with some GM fuel cells involved. So there's lots of great projects and the scale is as you say that coming back to scale, ultimately, we have to drive costs down. And we have to be able to address the real the massive opportunities in the energy market. And so it's all going to be all about scaling up, scaling up the size of the size of the stack and scaling up the size of our systems and scaling up our manufacturing so that we can be a competitive, we can reduce the market for hydrogen today in the world. And that's how they make hydrogen renewable energy. We're on a path to driving our costs down, renewable costs come down and our stack costs system costs come down. We can already see that in two or three years, we can be competitive in many places with great hydrogen, with traditional hydrogen in many locations. So this is fantastic news, hydrogen economy in general, that is happening, but it does all. Well, and yeah, we're coming up on our stop time. And I wanted to thank you so much for spending some time with us. And if Paul has any other burning questions, if he can send them over to me shortly, we'll go ahead, Paul. No, I was just going to say it's interesting, Andy, that your stacks are rectangular and not cylindrical to get those types of pressures. And I was under the impression that in the EU, especially in Germany, stacks are treated as pressure vessels and they had to be cylindrical. Apparently, that's not true. Can you comment on that? Yeah, Paul's asking, Andy, we didn't show the pictures of your smaller stacks, but they're all cylindrical. And your megawatt stack is more like a box. And Paul's saying that in the European Union, they consider cell stacks as pressure vessels, and they're pretty much driven to the cylindrical shape. I have one final question for you. But if he can answer Paul's on how can he went to a more square stack or rectangular stack? And then I had a question about whether Geener is in the Hydrogen Council yet. Pretty good question. So, yes, in Europe, you have to meet all the PED guidelines and indeed our allogast stack, the rectangular stack, absolutely was designed very much with that in mind. So we've been able to achieve all the standards necessary to supply to selling Europe with a rectangular stack. And the advantage of being able to do that is from the point of view of the materials, it's a much more efficient shape from the point of view of maximum usage of the materials that go into each cell, some of which as you know, at least at current scales were working. Some of these are quite expensive materials at the moment. So yes, so good question Paul, but this is the best architecture to get the overall lowest cost from the point of view of all the factors that go into the into the calculations. Great, Andy, I'm going to interrupt for one second and have Eric throw up the Starfire video loop so you can answer the the Hydrogen Council question while we run a separate video that we took in Paul's shop yesterday. But are you guys part of the Hydrogen Council yet? No, not yet. That's something that they've just released a great report today talking about the future. It was released in Brussels the year and it's very produced by McKinsey, which is a really top class consulting firm. And it's a very optimistic view of the viability of green hydrogen and hydrogen in general for a large part of the hydrogen market. And it's also a a rallying call behind the need for investment and regulations to support the growth of the market because it's going to take some significant investment to drive the scale and to drive the cost down and to make this fully viable in a timely way. So that's very exciting and that's something we need to get on board there with the Hydrogen Council. I agree. As a small company, you have to pick and choose and we put a lot of effort and most of our funding into driving our product forward at the moment. Being part of these big industry movement is something we've got to step up to and increasing our marketing activity is something that's going to be a key part of our business activities going forward. All right. Well, we're pretty much out of time and I want to thank you again, Andy, and we'll try again with our technology here and get you on a later show where we can talk to you in person. And thanks to Paul Pantio and Blue Planet for hosting us here on the Big Island and Paul for participating on this moonshot of a telecast. And until next week, Stan the Energyman signing off. Aloha. All right, Andy. Thank you so much.