ITM Power announces that they have been awarded a contract by The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), under its Net Zero Innovation Portfolio Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply 2 Competition, to accelerate the commercial deployment of ITM Power’s 5 MW Gigastack platform and its manufacture. The award for the Gigatest project is for £9.3 MM and follows initial designs developed through previous BEIS funding competitions.

The 5 MW Gigastack platform sits at the heart of the Group’s technology roadmap.

Development commenced in 2019 with the completion of a feasibility study funded by the BEIS Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply Competition. This was followed by a second phase, also funded by the BEIS Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply Competition and covered two streams: a front-end engineering design study for a 100 MW deployment at Philips66 and Orsted in the Humber region and the development and validation of the Gigastack platform. The second phase concluded in 2021.

As announced in the half year results in January, the testing program for the 5 MW Gigastack platform includes both component level and full-scale evaluation. Gigastack is 2.5 times larger than ITM Power’s previous state-of-the-art stack platform and it will undergo rigorous testing in representative conditions to validate the performance through real-world conditions, ensuring the technology is ready for large-scale commercialization. This 4th-generation stack has multiple competitive advantages including lower capital costs and a smaller system footprint. These advantages will enhance the stack’s ability to operate under flexible conditions when coupled to renewable energy sources, producing green H₂ at low cost.

Gigatest will also enable the deployment and validation of key manufacturing equipment at the existing Gigafactory and the second, more automated facility on which construction commences later this year. This validation will contribute to the subsequent initiation of semi-automated mass-production of electrolyzer stacks.

Graham Cooley, CEO said, “The UK Government has put green hydrogen at the center of its plans to achieve its legislated net zero targets. This was underlined by the recent doubling of green hydrogen to 5 GW in the Energy Strategy published last month. Awards under competitions like this will ensure that the UK remains a world leader in energy transition technology and manufacture, creating jobs, new supply chains and valuable high-tech exports.”

Greg Hands, Energy Minister at BEIS said, “The UK is truly leading the world in hydrogen innovation thanks to the exciting efforts of companies like ITM Power. The government support which they have received today will help to boost the development of hydrogen as the clean, affordable, homegrown super fuel of the future.”