 Hey Aloha and welcome to Stand on the Energy Man here on Think Tech, Hawaii where community matters and we care about energy and first off before I do anything else I want to send our hearts and prayers out to the folks impacted by the hurricane down on the Gulf Coast and you know when I started doing this stuff I got a new appreciation for energy and when you think about the amount of energy in a hurricane it's hard to imagine until you see the devastation that a cat four or cat five hurricane does like what it did to the Gulf Coast this past week and you know you can't fight mother nature when she rolls through that stuff and the best you can do is survive and turn around and start rebuilding so they got a lot of work to do down there and you can do anything to help them out probably probably ought to think about doing that. So today we got a great show I've been trying to get this gentleman on as a guest for months and months and months and months and I've seen him do two briefings in the last six weeks or so and he's definitely he's just expanded his repertoire and gotten even more and more awesome in his knowledge of his trade which is making hydrogen from water and electricity and so today's guest is Mr. Steve Samansky. This company was recently bought out it used to be Proton on site and now they're part of Nell Hydrogen which is I believe a Norwegian company and I'll let Steve tell all about that but hey Steve welcome to the show and thanks for being on I really appreciate it. Aloha Stan. Hey nice shirt by the way. Trying to get into the Aloha spirit. Good. Well we'll see you here in December but why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you got into doing what you're doing with Nell. Sure you know I like to tell people that you know I first started working with electrolyzers back in 1988 when I first got out of college but I was working on electrolyzers for space and defense applications. I was working at United Technologies who did a lot of innovation in PEM electrolyzers but they were focused on applications for you know for NASA and the Navy where the electrolyzer was producing oxygen for you know basically for respiration and you know it's a very different you know kind of application space that we use that we're looking at electrolyzers for today but the founders of Proton onsite you know all came from United Technologies and their vision was to commercialize the technology for energy applications in fact our original the name of our company was Proton Energy Systems and it's still actually our registered incorporated name but you know they wanted to take it out of that cost plus you know space and defense contracting you know space and really move it into the commercial sector and so that's really what we focused on since 1996 is basically commercial applications for hydrogen recognizing early on that the energy markets were a little bit off in the future we focused heavily on industrial markets because you know hydrogen is used as a commodity gas for a lot of different industrial applications and so we were able to you know sell electrolyzers into those markets and and pay the bills and keep the lights on while the energy markets were still kind of emerging and but now you know more recently I think people really are appreciating the fact that using hydrogen from electrolysis really can be a very complimentary and enabling technology for renewable energy you know really doing large-scale high penetration of renewable energy and so our new corporate owners Nell hydrogen you know they had that they shared that same vision and last year they acquired us to really compliment the work that they're doing on large-scale alcohol and electrolyzers as well as hydrogen fueling systems so our sister companies in Norway and Denmark produce you know very large alcohol and electrolyzers and at the factory in Denmark we make the world's you know first UL listed hydrogen fueling station equipment so we can produce up to 300 hydrogen fueling stations a year at our facility in Denmark and you know that makes it literally the world's largest hydrogen fueling equipment factory and so between our you know the the PEM electrolyzer work we do here in Connecticut and the alcohol and electrolyzers and the hydrogen fueling equipment and we really can offer kind of a full solution for you know energy storage and fueling applications yeah I'm just curious when you worked at United Technologies was that right was that the same place in Windsor that's now doosan and US hybrid fuel cell that was their you know technologies they called it UTC power and they did stationary fuel cells using phosphoric acid technology as well as they did the bus fuel cells so they did PEM fuel cells for buses and when they sold off that division the high-temperature fuel cells went to doosan and then the low-temperature PEM fuel cells went to US hybrid so those two companies are kind of have carried on that technology actually works for the the Hamilton standard division of United Technologies where they did the electrolyzers but we you know we know we knew the folks in South Windsor very well okay great we knew you hit on the work in Norway and Denmark excuse me but you know one of the things that that I'm always asked and it ties back to your work with NASA and the military is you know how safe is hydrogen and we always get the Hindenburg stuff and the H-bump stuff I'm I'm kind of getting numb to it but you know people don't realize that hydrogen's been around I mean literally for at least a century well understood but in the last 50 years we we've done a lot to make hydrogen very safe to handle very safe to transport and like you say we use it in space applications to make oxygen we use it in submarine applications to make oxygen same technology that you're making hydrogen with your electrolyzer and then even the liquid hydrogen for rocket fuels and things like that and and the safety aspects of all those different uses are well established well regulated and well standardized is there anything you can add to that because I think that's the hardest point for me to get across to some folks yeah I mean you know the you know I do like to point to the you know the Navy application because we we have a production contract for not only the US but also the UK and the French navies as well you know basically all the nuclear navies in the world use pemelectualizers to produce oxygen on submarines and you know one of the things that I've known you working with the Navy all these years is that you know they're very risk averse I mean they don't let you put anything on a submarine unless it's it's really proven and it's got you know kind of redundancy and safety designed into it and you know so you know to me any technology that is kind of good enough for the Navy is is going to be more than robust enough for kind of consumer applications now you know in the in the in the world of you know vehicle you know fueling you know there's there's been a lot of safety codes and standards work done on a hydrogen fueling and storage so that you know I always tell people that the fuel cell vehicles that we operate are safer than any gasoline vehicles that they'll ever operate exactly and you know and that's it's an important thing I mean I think that yeah you can get into just really technical discussions with people on it but ultimately you know the fact that hydrogen is the lightest element in the universe it disperses very rapidly you know as opposed to you know gasoline vapors are heavier than air and they'll pull up under your vehicle and you know if you've ever seen a you know gasoline vehicle fire you know they're they're pretty terrifying but all the work that's been done with hydrogen in vehicles shows that you know the hydrogen disperses so so rapidly that the vehicle never gets engulfed like a gasoline vehicle does yeah we were fortunate out here Mitch Ewan from the University sponsored a lot of training for our firefighters when the DOD was demonstrating hydrogen fuel cell vehicles so we had to train all the firefighters on how to respond to a vehicle incident with as a hydrogen vehicle and by the time we finished training them they literally just exactly as you said they go we'd rather deal with a hydrogen incident than a fuel gasoline incident or even a diesel incident for that matter because if you have a leak if it's not burning we let a leak when you're done there's nothing to clean up and we go home if it happens to catch fire it's a very directional fire if there's nothing in the past path of that kind of blowtorch looking flame we just let it burn till it's done burning there's usually not too much damage to the rest of the car and we go home you know I mean they loved it they they they agreed with you that it's it's safer than gasoline yeah we we've operated our own public access hydrogen fueling station here proton for since 2010 now and we use it for training you know as you said kind of fire and the first responder type folks as well I mean it's an important aspect of you know kind of doing outreach on this subject is really kind of bringing those people in and showing them because seeing is is understanding and and I think that doing training at the facility is really important yeah you know another aspect besides the safety that's kind of the first thing people ask the second thing is you know how how long does this equipment last and you know is there a lot of maintenance to it and things like that can you talk a little bit about you know your your electrolyzers that are working now and I mean we have one at Hickam that's been running I think since 2008 so that's 10 years already what's what's the kind of average life and what are some of the issues you have with your equipment to keep them maintained and running and give us an idea of that kind of operating cost factor of electrolyzers modern ones yeah I mean we we typically say the equipment is designed for a 20 to 25 year useful life you know certainly there is some maintenance that you have to do but it's it's relatively minor you know I mean you know the cost of maintenance kits kits is you know maybe on the order of a couple thousand dollars a year or something like that and and typically you're talking about one day of downtime for preventive maintenance the yeah the stack life is something we say it's it's you know about a 10 year life so so if you are planning on operating the system for you know 20 years you should plan on a stack change out at some point kind of during the middle of the life of the equipment and as I said earlier before we went on the air you know if you know the the number one thing to keep the stack life as long as possible is is is water quality if if if we can work with the customer to assure that the stack is always getting good water quality then you can expect a really good stack life okay yeah because we we were on our little we had you know you're you're well aware of Chris McWinnie's Millennium Rain they're in a little different category than you a much a much different end of the spectrum but we just did a reverse osmosis water purifier and ran it in there and and we have no problems with it at all and he's got that going when a bunch of his equipment so it's not a real high maintenance and the other piece that I'm aware of is desiccants if you have to change desiccants out and that's like you said it's just part of your periodic maintenance and it's not that expensive right how about seals and on pumps and and things like any kind of cooling pumps or seals that that need to be changed that you know what's kind of the typical periodic maintenance that you do once a year once every two years on this equipment besides the water filters yeah right yeah a lot of it is you know basically the electrolyzer balance of plant is basically just a water and gas management system you know the electrolyzer stack itself is where you split the water and basically you have you know kind of two exit ports I mean one port has hydrogen and water and the other one has oxygen and water and then all your the rest of the system really does is separate gas from water and dry it and back pressure it and so a lot of what you're doing is you're just maintaining those those water and gas systems and a lot of that is kind of filtration and replacing polishing beds and things like that you know pumps are you know these are typically centrifugal pumps I mean they you know they do have some you know some operational life you know where you know you you're gonna have to replace them periodically it's just kind of the nature rotating equipment you know so sometimes you know a customer may want to have a spare pump available or something like that but they're very quick to change out the other thing that's true of our equipment is that you know we do multi-stack systems so that you've got you know like in the equipment you have at Hickam there's three cell stacks and then there's three rectifiers there's a dedicated rectifier for each stack so if there's an issue with one of those modules let's say the other two can continue to operate so you have some kind of built-in redundancy which is which is helpful for customers because you know you don't lose all your hydrogen at once you just kind of get a derated capacity okay well we're coming up on a break here Steven and what I'd like to do when we come back is maybe talk about large-scale hydrogen production and maybe some grid applications things so we'll be back in 60 seconds. Aloha I am Howard Wig I am the proud host of Cold Green for Think Tech Hawaii I appear every other Monday at 3 and I have really really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency hope to see you there. Aloha I'm Wendy Lowe and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii and on our show we talk about taking your health back and what does that mean it means mind body and soul anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about whether it's spiritual health mental health fascia health beautiful smile health whatever it means let's take healthy back. Aloha. Hey welcome back to my lunch hour Stan Energyman here with Steve Samanski from now a Norwegian company that makes electrolyzers all sizes of electrolyzers they make alcohol and electrolyzers over in Europe and PEM which is a proton exchange membrane electrolyzers here in the US and we've been talking about just some of the safety and some of the things with with the technology in general what I like to do is kind of step it up and talk about some projects that are going on it Steve what can you tell us about what you're doing with Nicola motors because that Trevor Milton has been on my show twice now and I'm sure the folks out there are pretty excited when they hear about what he's doing with his big trucks and I know you have a relationship now has a relationship with him can you talk about that at all yeah I mean we have a supply contract with Nicola for basically building hydrogen fueling stations for their entire fleet of vehicles you know we're building our first couple stations now the first one's going to go in there outside their facility in Arizona we're going to be manufacturing the trucks and then the second one I think they've said is going somewhere in California but I'm not quite sure where the thing about their stations is they're all going to be electrolyzer stations you know a lot of the hydrogen filling stations in California today are delivered hydrogen stations so there's no on-site generation of hydrogen but you know the Nicola model is to produce the hydrogen on-site they are focused on locations where land is cheap and power is cheap and so they can do these relatively large fueling stations for their their truck customers and basically what they're offering is a lease that it's a dollar per mile lease that includes the hydrogen fuel so they in order to make the lease work they need to be able to produce the hydrogen at a loan off cost so that you know so that they're they can make money on it and what we are focused on for the the commercial stations is a ton per day configuration with an electrolyzer with eight stacks so each stack will do one metric ton per day of hydrogen that's that's a total of eight metric tons is 8,000 kilograms per day of hydrogen and we will be also providing the compression storage and dispensing equipment because that's what our sister company in Denmark does so it's a it's a very large undertaking I mean we're talking about you know notionally about 400 48 of these stations nationwide and you know as you know having this contract enables us to build a really state-of-the-art large new factory to do electrolyzer stacks and that is really going to enable a real step change reduction in the cost of electrolysis systems so not only are they already the most efficient electrolyzers in the world now we're going to be able to offer them at a cost that's really you know probably you should be able to surpass you know what anybody else can do just because we've got this huge volume and that's the kind of thing that's really exciting about the Nicola partnership is that it's enabling hydrogen to become ubiquitous here in in the United States it's going to be everywhere they have plans to sell the hydrogen for like duty customers as well so you'll be able to pull up in your Mariah or your clarity and fill up at one of their truck stops as well and they'll even export it if there's a local market for it they'll they'll sell the hydrogen as well so they've got this kind of multi-dimensional business model and you know the thing that for me is really exciting and kind of gratifying the fact that you know we're going to be able to get the cost of hydrogen down to what we what we call fossil parity it's going to be on a dollar per mile basis it's going to be as good or better than diesel in the trucking industry and a lot cleaner so a lot cleaner yeah hey you know that you mentioned something and we talked about this before we came on the air a lot of the wind farms in I was surprised by the 20% of Texas's electricity is from their wind farms a lot of those big wind farms and the big industrial grade and commercial solar and wind properties they got a lot of tax credits and things and helped them put that equipment in but a lot of those incentives and those benefits are starting to run out and so up until now they've been able to sell their electricity pretty cheap but that's going to change here in the next few years how does that impact on doing electrolysis on the scale that Trevor's looking at with with Nicola well I I think it's a tremendous opportunity you know I I have been told by you know wind plant operators in the pan Antelope Texas that in the wintertime you know up to 40% of the time they're under negative pricing because there's there's you know there's no demand for that power and you're right you know they've they've been able to get production tax credits that help them to still you know they're still making some money but as those production tax credits get phased out you know more and more they're looking at other ways to monetize that those electrons and so you know they are saying you know rather than selling it for you know just a penny or two back to the grid or have an actually pay for someone to take it we could offer it for hydrogen production and having this demand from you know a you know that these long-haul trucks that are going to be getting on the road in 2020 really offers a tremendous opportunity to them to help you know support their their wind plant operations you know I'm I am not a an engineer or scientist but you know I so I use a lot of rule of thumb kind of things what have you got a price point on electricity where in the big scheme of things with compression and everything else you say if I can get power for six cents a kilowatt hour or eight cents a kilowatt hour whatever that I know we can make it is do you have a kind of a rule of thumb that you use to to kind of see if it's even feet in the ballpark for some of these things yeah I mean what people often want to compare hydrogen production cost to is what you can get it from an SMR plant right and right now a big SMR plant can produce hydrogen for about $2 a kilogram okay you know we've looked at some opportunities you know where you know if we can get maybe power for a couple cents and we can do it at you know maybe like a you know 50 to 100 megawatt scale we can produce hydrogen at $2 a kilogram so you know you're so it's really not that far you know out of the realm of possibility that today with today's model for electrolysis that you can already make hydrogen for the same as an SMR plant yeah that's that's where I see this thing really starting to come together in the next year or two when we have this kind of conversion of all these factors scaling up and the factor the fact that Nicola Motors is putting the stations out there you know they're bringing the chicken and the egg and across the continent how are you going to get hydrogen across states and aren't Zev states without any incentives and the states don't put it up unless somebody else steps in and it looks like Nicola is doing it with you folks so that's that's awesome the one thing I was surprised to hear those those trucks are at 700 bar on the pressure store is that correct yeah that is true I mean you know they have to offer a range that's as good or better than a diesel truck so you know 700 bar gives them that range okay so as we look at them expanding and the kind of the maybe some of the incentives going away and helping helping give some of those when wind turbine guys who are have surplus electricity give them some money so that we can make hydrogen you see the market really taken off in the next two years or so or you know what's your crystal ball yeah no absolutely I mean I think you know more and more we are seeing you know not only the recognition of you know just the kind of the wind plant operators but you know even utilities are really starting to step up now and understanding that if you know they're going to be pushing more and more renewables onto the grid I mean you know Hawaii's got a hundred percent rps mandate California's got the same thing now and these states as they look at you know trying to put more and more renewables onto their grid they're going to need a portfolio of solutions and hydrogen definitely is going to fit into that portfolio of energy storage solutions that's going to enable them to do you know come you know 100 100 percent renewable grid yeah I see it coming I just you know I see this thing going and I waver on the fact that I may be doing inside trader violations with the with the securities and exchange commission because I'm so bullish on hydrogen but I just see it happening I just it's almost unavoidable that the right things are coming together price of electricity the curtail power on renewables the new like you say renewable portfolio standards that are coming out from the different states it's all starting to come together and and we see the the grid piece is important too in fact I tell people that the grid and the transportation energy world are merging because the future of transportation is going to be electric and hydrogen and battery plug-in are both electric it's going to happen so you have to just watch that thing happen and it's all coming together over the next few years so I'll see if I tell you what it's been half hours gone by already and I really really thank you for being on the show today you brought a lot of great insight to to the folks here on on think tech in here in Hawaii and I'm looking forward to seeing you in December so maybe we're going to invite a whole bunch of people out to know how and and tell them to call Greg Barber and get invited to this conference in Kona and they can hear you give them a good update in December on what Nell's doing and what the state of electrolysis is here in the world Mahalo Stan and and I'm looking forward to being in Hawaii in December too for sure okay well we'll see you then save your loha shirts and maybe we'll buy a new one while you're here too sounds good all right take care and thanks everyone for tuning in today and we'll do that here next week with stan energy man thanks to robert and cindy here in the studios for making all the magic happen connected me to steve over there on the east coast and we'll see you next week aloha