Bill Gates-backed Electric Hydrogen handed a further $18m of US government cash to manufacture massive electrolysers
Start-up received $46.3m Department of Energy grant last month, after raising more than $600m from private investors
A start-up backed by billionaire investors including Bill Gates has been awarded a $18.3m tax credit from the US government, exactly three weeks after receiving a $46.3m grant from the Department of Energy (DOE).
Stay ahead on hydrogen with our free newsletter
Electric Hydrogen, which is due to start producing its revolutionary 100MW electrolysers in Massachusetts this month, has already raised more than $600m in private funding since it was founded in 2020.
The new award — in the form of a transferable tax credit from the DOE, Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service — comes from the Qualifying Advanced Energy Project 48C initiative, for which funding was allocated in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
“Electric Hydrogen was selecved for this award for its advancements in manufacturing technology, ability to serve large-scale commercial projects in the near-term and commitment to building out US manufacturing capacity,” the company said in a statement.
The funding will be used to manufacture low-cost 100MW electrolyser stacks — by far the world’s largest, which it says have been designed to “deliver the lowest-cost green hydrogen on Earth — at its under-construction 1.2GW factory in Devens, Massachusetts.
The first 100MW electrolyser stacks are due to be shipped to a project in southeast Texas later this year, which Hydrogen Insight understands is a 100MW green hydrogen facility being built by LNG specialist New Fortress Energy.
“The DOE’s continued investment will allow Electric Hydrogen to increase its rate of production on a timeline that can address the growing customer demand for green hydrogen,” said the company’s senior vice-president of manufacturing, Jigesh Trivedi.
Developers have already reserved more than 2GW of electrolysis production capacity at the plant.
Electric Hydrogen only offers one product: a standardised 100MW pre-fabricated green hydrogen plant, which integrates both the electrolysers and surrounding balance-of-plant equipment, such as water treatment and thermal management.
Most electrolysis systems are made up of smaller-sized stacks that are configured together into a larger plant, but Electric Hydrogen claims that by building its systems bigger from the start it can take advantage of economies of scale and bring costs down fast.
The Massachusetts-based start-up raised $198m in Series B funding in 2022 — from investors such as Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Amazon and Rio Tinto — and a further $380m in Series C funding last year from companies including Microsoft, BP and Fortescue.
Electric Hydrogen CEO Raffi Garabedian is a former chief technology officer at the US’s most successful solar-panel manufacturer, First Solar, while the start-up’s engineering chief Dorian West helped guide development of Tesla’s first electric vehicle, the Roadster.
(Copyright)