U.S.-based Ohmium makes India base for global mfg of hydrogen electrolysers

U.S.-headquartered Ohmium International, a leading green hydrogen integrated company making Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolysers, has started a new Giga-level factory in Doddaballapura, just outside of Bengaluru, to make India its manufacturing base for global supplies.

The 2 gigawatt (GW) factory with 14,000 square meters of production space is expandable to 4GW. It will produce hyper modular PEM electrolysers to meet the growing demand for green hydrogen from customers in India and around the world, says Arne Ballantine, Global CEO of Ohmium. The new factory is Ohmium’s second manufacturing facility in India, bringing together manufacturing, assembly, quality assurance, testing, warehouse and shipping facilities under one roof.

It plans to make India the base for manufacturing and export to customers worldwide, competing with companies like Siemens and Cummins. Ohmium currently has a global green hydrogen project pipeline of more than 2 GW across three continents.

"At present, the global installations for green hydrogen are not beyond 200 megawatts in some 100-odd projects and were mostly at pilot scale. With the kind of orders we have, I expect this will change to gigawatt scales within the next two years," he tells Fortune India.

Various estimates say globally, over 500 hydrogen projects have been announced to be developed between 2021 and 2030, of which more than 40 are giga-scale green hydrogen projects. Today, electrolyser manufacturing capacity is about 8 GW per year, and based on industry announcements, it could exceed 60 GW per year by 2030. Gujarat Fluorochemicals (GFL), Larsen &Toubro and many other companies are getting ready to enter into PEM electrolyser production.

Ohmium has already partnered with Tata Projects to implement green hydrogen projects in India and has secured a 400-megawatt (MW) order from NTPC. It is also shortlisted for the Ministry of Renewable Energy’s First Round of Strategic Interventions for Green Hydrogen Transition (SIGHT) Incentives and has research tie-ups with CSIR-Central Electrochemical Research Institute (CSIR-CECRI) and IIT Madras Research Park (IITMRP).

“Our electrolysers are designed for mass production and easy assembly, as factory production can scale up quickly to meet growing demand, with additional cost savings as capacity expands,” says Ashwin Varma, Ohmium COO. From a sustainability point of view, 2GW of electrolysers can abate four million tons of CO2 per year – equivalent to the CO2 captured by 180 million trees, he adds.