Compression.

HyET compression technology is suitable for all segments of the compression market, except for very high volume(10.000 kg/day), this may change in the future when costs come down with scale. HyET’s product range provides a competitive alternative to mechanical applications in the following market segments.

Energy storage:

Storing electrical energy as hydrogen fuel is now feasible at high density with HyET’s compression technology. Hydrogen energy storage is the solution for a multitude of intermittent or distributed, renewable energy sources to address the seasonal character of renewables + grid flexibility. Even a small amount of surplus energy can be captured and stored with greater efficiency than at rated capacity.

Hydrogen refueling:

Road transportation will become an increasingly important application for HyET’s EHC.

Fuel cell and battery electric vehicles (FCEV and BEV) are both viewed as suitable replacements for fossil fuel fuelled vehicles, and both are solutions to enable clean and green road transportation.

Per kilometer range, a battery weighs over a kilogram, for hydrogen this value is less than a tenth of that. Refueling of hydrogen tanks will take similar time as refueling diesel or petrol, whereas charging batteries will always take longer to allow time for the heat to dissipate from the battery. Typically private cars have low operating hours, and apart from special occasions like holidays and vacations, they require a limited range on a daily basis. For such vehicles, batteries may well be the ideal solution as there is ample time to charge the battery and the limited range requires a limited size battery.

However, vehicles that are operated for extended periods of the day and drive many miles (buses, trucks, taxis) may have a better fit with hydrogen fuel cells as refueling times are short and tank sizes can be sized to meet refueling frequency or range.

We expect that especially heavy vehicles (trucks, buses) need hydrogen to meet the range and operational uptime requirements. Batteries are a suitable solution for large parts of the automotive market. However, when we take into consideration the costs of improving our power grid and building a charging network for large-scale (> 50% of all cars) rollout of BEV, it turns out that it is most likely cheaper to rely more heavily on hydrogen-fuelled vehicles. It is, therefore, our expectation that most heavy transportation and a considerable part of the automotive market will become hydrogen based.

As such, it is our expectation that over the coming decades there will be a large rollout of hydrogen refueling stations that will often require hydrogen compressors. These compressors should be low maintenance, quiet, compact and reliable, requirements where HyET’s EHPC stand out positively in comparison to mechanical compressors.

The FCEV market is only recently emerging which means that hydrogen sales volumes are low, but growing. HyET’s scalable technology is highly suited to allow refueling station operators to expand compression capacity with demand.

Small-scale applications:

With the large-scale implementation of solar power, it is the expectation that favorable net metering schemes will not last forever. Given that solar power generation mostly does not concur with power consumption, and if homeowners receive grid level prices for their energy, it may well become attractive to store the solar energy for when it is needed. Storing small amounts of power for short periods can be done using batteries. When storing larger amounts for longer periods hydrogen is a more cost-effective solution. To make storage effective and to allow multiple uses of the hydrogen (filling the tank of the FCEV) compressing it makes a lot of sense. HyET’s quiet, compact, low maintenance and energy efficient EHPC is an ideal solution to enable this home storage and usage.