Exploring Hydrogen Andy Marsland

A hotbed of Clean Energy Technologies and Training – Stanwell FEITH Project
Peter Goggin is the Manager for Hydrogen Development at Stanwell Corporation and has over three decades of experience in the electricity industry. He has worked in various capacities in business development, commercialisation, and project delivery in Australia and the UK. Throughout his career, Peter has developed projects across a wide range of domains, including solar PV, energy efficiency, battery storage, wind power, wave power, bioenergy, and waste-to-energy technologies.
1.15 - Intro to Stanwell
 
Stanwell is a Queensland Government-owned corporation. They have about 3. 2 gigawatts of coal-fired power generation and are moving towards the transformation of that generation base to a renewable energy future. Stanwell has about three gigawatts of renewable energy in its pipeline, either contracted or under development.
 
2.26 - Intro to Peter’s role
 
In his current role at Stanwell, Peter's primary objective is to establish a sustainable domestic business model in renewable hydrogen for Stanwell. His endeavours are centred around leveraging the potential and scale of the Central Queensland Hydrogen (CQH2) Project into the Queensland market.
 
3.20 - What does FEITH stand for and what is it?
 
Future Energy Innovation and Training Hub
●     The FEITH will develop the new technologies and workforce skills required to achieve Stanwell’s strategic objectives and the Queensland Energy and Jobs Plan (QEJP).
●     In its ultimate form, the FEITH is expected to feature: a hub to demonstrate to the community a range of hydrogen applications, their safety, and the benefits to local and regional areas.
●     Medium-long duration battery storage, transmission and renewable energy integration technologies for the NEM, state-of-the-art workforce skills and technical training for trade, higher education and research, a world-class commercial-scale research and testing.
●     It will feature a precinct for innovation and technology validation and a servicing and maintenance workshop.
●     It will increase our understanding of new energy technologies and their application in building Stanwell’s renewable energy portfolio and driving the development of Queensland's hydrogen industry.
 
06.00 - What is an iron flow battery and what is the potential user case?
 
07.00 – Hysata’s electrolyser 
 
A revolutionary 4-5MW hydrogen electrolyser will also be validated in a pilot project at FEITH. The super-efficient electrolyser is being developed by Australian startup Hysata.
10.15 - The scaling challenge in the industry
11.36 - How does FEITH support Stanwell and the local community?
13.40 - What stage are you at with the project
-       Have commenced with the common infrastructure
-       Iron flow battery works will begin in the next few months
-       Phased development
-       We have received some funding from the QLD government from the QLD Renewable Energy Hydrogen Jobs Fund
-       Hoping to be ready for the Hysata pilot unit within the next 12 months
16.20 - What are the criteria that organisations go through before Stanwell decides to partner with someone?
Starts with us being aligned with the counter party with the objectives. On the technology side, it would be about the technology readiness level.
18.30 – Training at FEITH
-       Future pathways training is being developed
-       A range of different skills that need to be developed (cross-skilling and upskilling) 
-       Using that modern virtual reality type technology to get training opened up more broadly to users of the facility
21.40 - What are the biggest challenges you are facing at the moment
-       Scaling challenges
-       This is a brand new industry and there are a lot of new/novel things happening we need everyone’s support
22.53 - What does success look like?
 
“Success for me with FEITH would

De-mystifying economic policy for Hydrogen – “The 5 Levers”, with GHD
 
Introduction to Ariel:
 
Ariel Elboim a Senior Advisor for GHD working in the future energy market. A consultant for 10 years, Ariel has worked on the decarbonisation of infrastructure, and renewable energy projects across various sectors, including energy, water and transport. For the past 5 years, his focus has been dedicated to accelerating the growth of the hydrogen industry in Australia. He plays an active role not only through his project work for both private and public clients but also through his engagement with industry, including his position as H2Q Hydrogen Queensland Policy Advocacy Taskforce Lead.
 
1.45 - About GHD & Ariel's work
 
GHD is a globally recognised organisation operating in the markets of engineering, architecture, digital, water, energy, environment, and transport. Above 11,000 employees across 5 continents and 120+ offices.
 
Over the last 4 years, Ariel has been working holistically to accelerate the growth of the hydrogen industry in Australia, and that's been looking at strategic, tactical, operational projects, and more recently, at policy and policy mechanisms and how they can be conducive to the growth of the industry in Australia.
 
3.00 - The work H2Q Hydrogen Queensland is doing to help translate what industry sentiment is and how that can help inform government policy. They have been doing a lot of engagement and report writing over the last year with a white paper that was released over Christmas.
 
4.15 -Summary of the 5 levers & examples around the world
 
Lever # 1 - Tax Regulation
 
What can the government do in terms of regulatory standards and requirements to influence proponent behaviour, and what kind of tax levers can they use to influence taxpayers' behaviour? 
 
Regulatory standards and requirements that the government can implement to influence behaviour, or what kind of tax incentives or penalties can the government implement to also influence behaviour?
 
06.00 - Carbon prices around the world & the Safeguard Mechanism
 
08.20 - Lever #2 - Tax credits & subsidies
 
Tax credits and subsidies are an incentive-based policy instrument that provides market-compatible forms of direct government intervention.
 
 
09.00 - U. S. Inflation Reduction Act
 
This offers a tax credit of up to $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced. That $3 per kilogram is based on the carbon intensity of the product.
 
10.06 - What can Australia do, even without having such ‘deep pockets’ as the US?
 
11.20 - Lever #3 - Market based schemes
 
Market-based schemes are interesting because they're an amalgamation of different mechanisms and they usually consist of a pull mechanism or a lever that tries to pull investment into the market, and a push mechanism, so it pushes proponents to do something.
 
12.30 - Lever # 4 - Contracts for Difference
 
This lever is getting a lot of attention across the world at the minute, especially in the hydrogen space. CFDs, Contracts for Differences, are financial contracts between a supplier and a purchaser of energy, provided a certain price. The Contract for Difference stipulates that the purchaser will pay the seller the difference between the market value at the time of contracting.
 
Essentially a market price is agreed upon, usually called the strike price, and this is based on several factors. It could be the level of CO2 emissions that are being abated. It could be the cost of the fossil fuel plus a green premium, whatever the market decides is a strike price, but everyone agrees that's the baseline.
 
14.45 - Review periods for Contracts for Difference
 
"Contracts for Difference usually last for about 10, 12, 15 years and by that point, the market will have readjusted to an equilibrium. And then you reassess it."
 
17.00 - "The biggest issue in the hydrogen space at the minute and the reason projects aren't getting past FID, or to FID, is because the prem

Guest bios:
 
Denis Thomas is Director of Business Development and Marketing for water electrolysis at Accelera by Cummins, which has acquired the activities of Hydrogenics in 2019.
Before joining the company in 2014, Mr. Thomas worked 8 years in the solar photovoltaic sector in Europe. Mr. Thomas holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and in Renewable Energy.
 
Michael Bartsch is the Regional Sales and Business Development manager for water electrolysis at Accelera by Cummins. Before joining the company in 2020, Mr Bartsch worked for 26 years in a mixture of Mining, Petroleum, Water Treatment and Geothermal sectors. Mr. Bartsch is an Industrial Chemist with formal qualifications in Science, Business Administration and Energy.
 
Cummins is more than 104 years old, specialising in engines and gensets with 70,000 people worldwide. Accelera is a brand within the company that hosts all the new technologies and has five main businesses and between 2000-3,000 employees
 
2.30 – The main technologies within Accelera
-       Electrolysers
-       Fuel cells
-       Electrified components
-       Power train systems
-       Traction systems
 
4.00 – Explanation of the different types of electrolysers  
-       Alkaline-       PEM-       Solid oxide-       Anion Exchange Membrane
 
06.30 - PEM - Proton Exchange Membrane. 
 
08.15 - Solid oxide and Anion Exchange Membrane
 
09.15 - Concerns about the catalyst being used in PEM technology
 
10.44 - Sizes of electrolysers that Accelera Manufacture
The products are PEM technology. 30 bar pressure. HyLyzer 500, 1000 and 5000.
 
13.00 - Interesting and challenging projects across the globe:
The Quebec project is commercial, meaning running the electrolyser daily. The hydrogen is liquefied and then delivered by Air Liquide to industrial customers.
 
15.30 – Emergence of much larger projects across the globe
Customers are now leaning more toward double-digit and triple-digit production.
 
16.26 - Learnings through the project in Canada
 
19.17 - Australian market compared to the rest of the world
The speed to market in the other locations is by far faster at the moment. In Australia, there is a push for regional codes and standards adoption. When products have to be modified before they can be introduced so there's a lag factor there in terms of being able to deploy or modify existing designs for them to be accepted.
 
“We will initially be importing products mainly from Europe, but it'll get to a point where the project size here in Australia is big enough to justify local manufacturing.”
 
24.15 – Manufacturing of the Electrolysers “We've been working a lot on designing new processes and we are implementing them in the different factories. We have started already in Belgium, which was an existing factory. We have built another in Spain that will start production in the first quarter of next year. We will be using this flow-based manufacturing. It is super interesting because it gives us a lot of flexibility.”
 
25.00 – Current challenges
-       The business case of producing hydrogen; in many cases, it is more expensive than the conventional way of producing hydrogen with natural gas. 
-       The size is increasing, and there is an increased link with renewable power which also brings challenges.  
-       Electrolyser technologies are new so companies need to get used to it
-       Infrastructure challenges - hydrogen storage and pipelines
-       Execution capability
 
Regulation and policy can be used to play an important role in giving a premium value to hydrogen in comparison to the incumbent technology…Where there is a lack of policy, there is a high uncertainty on those projects, meaning that it is difficult for us to anticipate and forecast the market.
 
33.13 - Which skillsets will be sought after in the coming years?
 
35.00 – Advancements in technology
-     

Subtitle: The future of air travel – reach the other side of the world, sustainably, within 4 hours
 
Destinus is an organisation focusing on creating hypersonic air travel, which is five times the speed of sound, not just supersonic. That is travelling across the world sustainably in as little as four to five hours. They are a young startup company founded only two years ago. Destinus is already working in four countries in Europe; Switzerland, Spain, France and Germany.
 
Bios:
Bart Van Hove is the Head of Advanced Studies at Destinus. He studied mechanical and aerospace engineering. He became interested in hypersonics and fluid dynamics at the von Karman Institute, where he worked on hypersonic aerodynamic wind tunnels. He did his PhD on Mars atmospheric entry capsules and has been fascinated by astronomy and science from an early age. Destinus is as close to space as you can reasonably fly on Earth, in the stratosphere at Mach 5. While that’s slow for a planetary lander, it’s insanely fast for a passenger aircraft. Bart likes to work on difficult problems with interesting people.
 
Philip Silva is a Mechanical Design Engineer for Destinus. He has worked on cutting-edge technologies at the CERN particle physics experiments, the ITER fusion reaction, and has been involved in numerous hydrogen technology projects involving cryogenics and fuel cells. He is responsible for hydrogen business development at Destinus, including mobility and energy generation.

 
3.00 - Key learnings from the test flights:
The test flights now are subsonic so the aircraft are relatively basic, but they have some special features you don't see in any other plane. There are many things we want to learn about, and one of them is the shape of the aircraft. They are very aggressively shaped to be hypersonic, even though today they fly subsonic.
 
4.30 - Subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic:
Subsonic is under the speed of sound, supersonic is at the rate of sound, and hypersonic is classified as five times the speed of sound.
 
5.20 - Overview of Destinus’s Goals
We want to make commercial hypersonic flight real. We want to go a lot faster than Concorde. And we want to make the world like a smaller place where we can go anywhere in less than 2-3 hours. 
 
6.00 – Is Destinus focussed on specific uses vs revolutionising air transport as a whole
If you look at hydrogen in aviation today, it is usually focused on fuel cells, which is good for short, maybe medium-range travel. We’re working on combustion, and a lot faster. What we are working on is flying to the other side of the world and coming back on the same day. So that means no jet lag and a completely different way in which people will travel.
 
7 - Amount of fuel to have to keep on board
We're talking about several tons of fuel, which is not crazy in itself, but the volume of hydrogen is very large because the density is low. You have to store this hydrogen in a liquid form, which means it has to be cryogenic, very cold. That's one of the main challenges with these aircraft.
 
8 - The challenges, when you fly hypersonic compared to supersonic & refuelling
We are very heavily involved in the refuelling and the ground infrastructure. We have recently created a consortium to create infrastructure in an airport in France.
 
9.30 - Changes required when this comes to fruition
The aircraft are designed to operate at airports and they have to operate in airspace together with classical planes. That reality means we need to be compatible with the airports and beyond the fuel infrastructure and use the runways that exist.
 
10.30 - Safety aspects of having these aircraft
For the aircraft, we're going to be storing hydrogen in liquid form, so the pressure is very low. It's just much safer so if there's anything that happens the hydrogen will expand, but it will not explode, it will not create a shockwave, for example.
 
13.00 - Navigating through the legislation:
Hydrogen is slowly m

Exploring Hydrogen ep 15 - Shownotes
 
Intro:
In this episode we’re geeking out about Hydrogen trains with Troy Shorley, Technical Director and Daniel Koning, Principal Consultant and Subject Matter Expert from Deutsche Bahn.
 
Deutsche Bahn currently has the largest fleet of hydrogen trains in the world, so in this episode, we enjoyed welcoming two of their experts on low and zero-emission technologies to take a deeper dive. DB Engineering and Consulting is working in 84 nations worldwide, providing railway engineering, and railway consulting operations services.
 
Deutsche Bahn Engineering and Consulting is part of the Deutsche Bahn Group in Germany, the owner and operator of the Rail Network in Germany. Deutsche Bahn Group employs 320,000 people worldwide and DB Engineering & Consulting employs over 5,000 people.
 
Bios:
 
Troy is an Electrical Engineer with over 20 years of experience in electricity, transmission rail and engineering consultancy.
He has extensive experience in rail traction systems, low and zero-emission technologies, and examining the different technologies and their interdependence within rail traction systems. He is an expert in system design, earthing, and bonding system integration, as well as construction and commissioning supervision.
 
Daniel is a subject matter expert for railway systems and low and zero-emission technologies. He has 21 years of experience in the railway sector and over 10 years focused on innovative railway technologies and digitization. He has worked on major Australian and international projects across Europe, the USA, and Latin America as the Lead Subject Matter Expert, at Zero Emission Technologies.
 
 
03.10 - What is the opportunity/use-case for Hydrogen Trains?
 
Introducing hydrogen technology to trains would significantly contribute to decarbonising the transport sector. Hydrogen can bridge non-electrified gaps in our network where battery systems will be insufficient and where overhead continuing electrification can't be justified because the line frequency is not high enough.
 
05.00 – What percentage of the railway network in Germany is electric? And the decarbonisation opportunity for high-speed trains displacing short-haul flights
 
Currently, 65% of the network is electric and achieving 100% is not viable due to some of the lines being rural and certain areas that are not populated so the cost of electrification is too high.
 
Another opportunity is the decarbonisation of Australia, and one of the strategies Germany uses to reduce the overall decarbonization of transport is to replace short-haul flights with high-speed rail intercity express services.
 
 
7:00- Other options available (eg Battery /Biofuels/synfuels etc) to decarbonise the sector
 
The best option for highly frequented railway corridors is full electrification since the overall system efficiency is roughly 85 to 90% and you can't beat that. 
 
When you can't justify full electrification for shorter routes currently up to a hundred kilometres that are non-electrified, then battery electric traction is a good alternative. You can recover braking energy and also have a higher system efficiency when the stretches are getting a little bit longer. Battery technology currently can't cope with that and also when the power demand is a little bit bigger, especially for freight transport. Hydrogen is a very interesting alternative, the fuel system can provide the range and combined with a battery system it can cope with a high power demand. And as an intermediate solution, we can look at renewable carbon-based fuels. They're also a way to quickly decarbonize railway traffic, and they are potentially a drop-in solution for existing diesel fleets.
 
9:10 - FFI is looking at ammonia for their train line supporting one of their mines in WA. 
 
Hydrogen is interesting, but the range you can achieve is limited due to the volumetric energy, density, and ammonia is a very interesting hydroge

Introduction to the guest, 
 
Russell James has over 19 years of experience in energy and is experienced in the delivery of small to large-scale energy and utility infrastructure projects. He has extensive knowledge of gas and energy markets, pricing, and regulations. Over the last four years, he has led or played a key role in all ATCO's hydrogen-related activities, including the development of the Clean Energy Innovation Hub, conceptualising and sourcing funding from the WA Government Renewable Hydrogen Fund for the Hydrogen Vehicle Refuelling station, and securing $28.7m from ARENA to develop the Clean Energy Innovation Park - a commercial scale renewable hydrogen production project. 
 
 
1.30 - Background of ATCO
ATCO stands for Alberta Trailer Company and began with modular trailers, which grew into acquiring Canadian utilities in the 1980s, including electricity generation, gas processing, storage, and transmission. They have just celebrated their 75th year in operation.
ATCO has diverse business operations, including modular structures, power stations, and a gas distribution network - in Australia, the network has 800,000 connection points and a focus on renewables and hydrogen/future fuels.
 
4 - Humble beginnings
ATCO now has over 6,200 employees and over $22 billion worth of assets. It has been operational in about a hundred countries and has 75,000 kilometres of electrical power lines and 65,000 kilometres of natural gas pipelines. However, despite the growth, it’s a very family-orientated business.
 
“We do what we say we're going to do, and that includes supporting those communities where we operate, and also supporting our employees in what they're doing.”
4.45 - Clean Energy Innovation HubThe project is an opportunity to showcase applications for the technology and the use of hydrogen gas in commercial, industrial and residential settings. 
“Energy security as you can imagine is extremely important particularly with our control room operation at the site, we can't afford to have outages because we're responding to those 800,000 customers, 24 7, 365 days a year”
6.45 -
●     Training facility at the innovation hub, which is a registered training organisation where they train all operatives to construct, operate and maintain the network.
●     Hydrogen courses at the facility
●     Have around 100 kilowatts of electrical demand at any point in time, 300 kilowatts of solar onto the rooftop.
●     Store excess renewables. 
● 200-kilowatt electrolyzer to convert water and split that through a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer, into hydrogen gas and oxygen.
9.35 - Key learnings
- Supply Chain challenges: “procuring an electrolyzer was different at that point in time when we were buying a 200-kilowatt electrolyzer. You couldn't go down to Bunnings and buy one off the shelf!!!.”
- Different procurement practices.
- Learning also included the integration of the regulations and standards and bringing the technical regulator along the journey as well.
The next Stage in the project was gas blending:
“The next step in the project and one we can talk about a little bit further is a blending project, which takes it out from behind the meter. We're actually blending out into around 2,700 homes and businesses around the Jandakot area.
11.30 - What percentage was it blended into the network and what percentage do you think you can get to?
13.19 - Collaboration in California with Southern California (SoCal) Gas
“...the approach that we like to take at ATCO is a ‘crawl, walk, run’. We'd rather learn on these smaller jobs and start to build to scale. And that's what we're doing, we're still focused on the large-scale export projects, but also let's build at manageable and build skill and capability.
With that project we're able to assist SoCal Gas to replicate what we've got through the hub and the hybrid home, which is another part of our site at Jandakot.”
15 - C