hydrogen refueling in a meadow

Dick Breteler, director HyMatters
"In our view, developing electrolysis systems for local use is an indispensable link in the hydrogen economy. For that you need partners who know how to make projects successful at the limit of the technically possible. We found that in Teesing."

Storage for later use

With an electricity grid that is full and a lot of local production of electrical energy, the demand for local storage systems is high. Right now we only have lithium-ion battery packs, but they are expensive and limited in capacity. Especially when it comes to corporate local energy storage. The solar panels on the roof of an average company produce an enormous amount of energy. And the consumption is correspondingly high.

Local storage of that self-generated energy is a solution to many of the problems we now face with sustainability. One solution that is much anticipated is converting excess energy to hydrogen. Hydrogen has a high energy density, so it does not need large tanks. Hydrogen can be converted back to electricity or used directly as fuel in conventional fuel engines. China is already betting big on the use of hydrogen in the transportation sector.

Conversion to hydrogen is also a great opportunity for agriculture. Especially since agriculture has the space to generate its own energy with windmills or solar panels.

Moreover, local conversion to hydrogen ensures security of electricity supply. And our dependence on electrical energy is only increasing.

"Hydrogen is the key to the energy transition as far as we are concerned."
Ed Nijpels, chairman of the Climate Tables

Easy to operate

There are now, in early 2019, four hydrogen refueling stations in the Netherlands. To increase support for hydrogen, work is now moving quickly to expand to about 20 by 2020. Colruyt is also going to open four new filling stations in Belgium in the near future. Filling up with hydrogen looks simple to the consumer but is very complex. This is mainly due to the high pressure of 700 Bar with which it is pumped. This way a car can be filled within 3 minutes and the energy density is much higher. This gives the cars a greater radius of action. Despite these high technical requirements, we managed to produce a filling gun that is easy to connect to the car and easy to handle. The filler gun can even communicate electronically with the car.