While such systems enable the supply of onsite hydrogen for industry, they also enable approaches such as “power-to-gas” and hydrogen mobility, the company said.

The generator, which produces hydrogen through the electrolysis of water, is manufactured by McPhy Italy and powered by 60 kW of electricity from the local electrical grid. The demonstrator can produce 12m³ of hydrogen per hour. The gas is then stored in McPhy’s HDS 100 system, which is based on magnesium hydride technology developed and manufactured by McPhy Energy in La Motte-Fanjas, France.

The system inaugurates the first commercial product line for onsite industrial hydrogen users worldwide. This first model, which has a storage capacity of 100 kg (for an energy content of 3.3 MWh), is the first in a commercial range reaching up to 500 kg of stored hydrogen (16.5 MWh).

It enables traditional hydrogen logistics (high-pressure delivery) to be replaced with production that is located at the point of use and aligned with demand. This project, funded by BPI France (formerly OSEO/ISI) was developed in an industrial consortium lead by McPhy Energy, with the CEA (the French Atomic & Alternative Energy Agency) and the company WH2.

The pilot presented today at our manufacturing site in La Motte-Fanjas is the first deliverable of the PUSHY project. In 2014, it will be followed by a demonstration of hydrogen production by hydroelectric energy, for the storage and exploitation of renewable energies in France as in Europe and across the globe.

—Pascal Mauberger, CEO of McPhy Energy

ENERTRAG and wind-hydrogen solutions. Separately, McPhy announced that McPhy Energy Deutschland GmbH is taking over the development and manufacturing of electrolyzers as well as the employees of ENERTRAG HyTec GmbH, as of 1 October. McPhy and ENERTRAG will work jointly to develop economic wind-hydrogen solutions.

The large-scale electrolyzers from HyTec, which will be known as McPhy Deutschland, range in power from 500 kW to multiple MW.

The HyTec large-scale electrolysis systems address the intermittency challenge of renewable electric energy by converting the electrical energy through the electrolysis of water into hydrogen. Hydrogen can then be injected into the natural gas-grid; used as valuable raw material in industry; or used to for fuel cell vehicles.

McPhy Energy’s core expertise is its innovative technology for storing hydrogen in a solid state, based on magnesium hydrides. In January 2013, McPhy also acquired another electrolysis specialist, PIEL of Italy, which specializes in smaller electrolyzer systems ranging up to 500 kW.