The e-Journal on Hydrogen and Fuel Cells
In 18 years of managing the f-cell show, its organizers have seen many trends, and businesses, come and go. Some companies that used to exhibit at the event no longer exist. Some of the speakers at past events have worked for multiple employers in the meantime. And before last year’s decision to move back to Stuttgart’s Haus der Wirtschaft, the show itself took place on the city’s showgrounds.
Ballard (Nasdaq: BLDP) had its very own October surprise, which caused the stock to take a nosedive. Though worse than expected, the USD 0.03 net loss per share and revenues of as little as USD 21.6 million weren’t to blame for the slump. Neither was the company’s low cash level of USD 23.2 million, reduced by inventory and AFCC asset purchases, nor the 2018 revenue target
Power purchase agreements are a central part of FuelCell Energy’s new corporate strategy. These agreements allow for long-term community purchases of electricity and energy. Not too long ago, the company concluded several contracts to that effect. One example is a 14.8-megawatt site in Derby, Connecticut. Meanwhile, it has been adding fuel cell power plants to its inventory as well, as it did last November
Hydrogenics (Nasdaq: HYGS) seems to be facing similar headwinds in China, mostly with regard to funding, bid requests and grant approval. It said the country offered excellent prospects; everything was just moving along a bit more slowly than expected. At the very least, backlog at Hydrogenics added up to USD 132 million, more than half of which originates with Alstom contracts for fuel cell trains. Thirty trains have already been ordered and more are said to follow this year.
Considering the many possible uses of fuel cells, the market for them won’t go up in a straight line. Nor will the large-scale production of cheap renewable hydrogen be a goal that can be accomplished overnight. Still, new hydrogen fueling stations will be added at a steady pace, and it will only be a matter of time until mass-produced fuel cell cars are available for sale.
The sky’s the limit, you might have been thinking, when Tesla’s stock jumped from USD 240 to about USD 340 in few days. On Oct. 23, 2018, a short while before the company said that it would preschedule the publication of third-quarter results, a well-known short seller named Andrew Left, of Citron Research, changed his outlook on Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA). In what seemed like a 180-degree turn from his previous position, he stated
Following a three-year break, the National Organization Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology held another NIP General Assembly between Dec. 5 and 6 last year. About 400 people came to Berlin to catch up on the latest developments regarding the National Innovation Program Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology, also known as NIP 2, or provide others with information about the same.
On Oct. 16, 2018, the eMove360° show in Munich was no longer an event that attracted mainly fans of battery-powered vehicles. For the first time, it featured a conference on fuel cell cars, attended by around three dozen people. However, the main question during this eMove360° Fuel Cell Conference, which took place at the same time as the show, was not whether battery or fuel cell vehicles would make it on the market but if and how the technologies could be combined.
Plans are becoming more concrete in Germany’s northernmost region, where communities are rapidly taking the lead in the production of renewable hydrogen and the creation a future-proof transportation system co-designed by citizens. In March 2017, project company GP Joule, based in Reußenköge, Germany, published a feasibility study to show what this renewable system could look like
Industrial gases producer Linde has a new hydrogen production system in Leuna, providing more evidence of the company’s shift in strategic focus. On Oct. 24, 2018, Linde announced that it would add another hydrogen liquefier to its chemical manufacturing facilities in Saxony-Anhalt. The unit, scheduled to come online in 2021, would double production capacity to ten metric tons of hydrogen a day and would, like the old one, be linked to the regional pipeline system