Source: Energy & Management Powernews, March 31, 2022
With fresh investor money, H2 Mobility wants to make its hydrogen refueling station network fit for the requirements of payload vehicles.
The French fund manager Hy24 wants to invest 70 million euros in the hydrogen refueling station operator H2 Mobility through its hydrogen fund "Clean H2 Infra Fund". The company made the announcement on March 29. H2 Mobility shareholders are to participate in the capital increase with a further 40 million euros, so that the Berlin-based company now has a total of 110 million euros at its disposal for the expansion and conversion of its filling station network.
By 2030, H2 Mobility wants to use this to build 210 new stations and convert a large proportion of the company's existing 90 hydrogen filling stations so that they can also be used to refuel commercial vehicles.
So far, H2 Mobility's refueling stations have been designed primarily for refueling cars at 700 bar and have a storage capacity of 170 to 200 kilograms of hydrogen. That is enough to refuel about 40 passenger cars, said a company spokeswoman in an interview with the editorial team. Hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles, however, would need 40 kilograms of hydrogen for a single tank filling, so that the storage capacities would have to be increased significantly here: in the future, one ton of hydrogen is to be kept in stock at the larger stations. A further increase at individual locations is also already planned so that the heavy-duty transporters planned by the manufacturers, which require 80 kilograms of hydrogen for a single tank filling, can also be supplied.
Focus on "cluster regions"
Hydrogen drives are seen as a promising way of reducing CO2 emissions from commercial vehicle fleets, so a sharp increase in hydrogen-powered trucks and buses on German roads can be expected. To achieve this, not only the storage systems but also the tank systems themselves need to be upgraded: While passenger cars are refueled at 700 bar, 350 bar is currently the standard for commercial vehicles. And here, too, other developments are conceivable for the future: Thus Daimler Truck sets for example with the development of its "GenH2 Trucks" not on gaseous, but on liquefied hydrogen.
With the development of the net one wants to concentrate on approximately ten "cluster regions", in which one expects a particularly high demand - for instance because there logistics enterprises are settled or the conversion of the vehicles of the public local traffic on hydrogen is planned, it was said on demand. Which regions these will be, is not yet finally certain.
H2 Mobility is according to own data the prominent hydrogen gas station operator in Germany. The shareholders of H2 Mobility involved in the capital increase are Air Liquide, Daimler Truck, Hyundai, Linde, OMV, Shell and Total Energies.
Author: Katia Meyer-Tien