Green hydrogen plays an important role in making the energy system more sustainable and stronger. This is especially true for sectors where direct electrification has limited applicability, such as chemicals, steel and refining. A new platform, the Community of Practice for Electrolysis (COPE), should accelerate the development and scale-up of electrolysis technology. COPE aims to enable hydrogen technology to be tested and scaled up faster and more efficiently through improved collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Producing green hydrogen requires electrolysers, plants that convert water and electricity into hydrogen and oxygen. Although the technology is developing rapidly, moving from laboratory to large-scale application is complex and costly. A key challenge is the lack of proper testing facilities and common standards.
COPE helps companies and researchers find suitable test facilities. The platform aims to better connect existing test sites so that available infrastructure can be used more efficiently. It also supports collaboration on life cycle research and test methods.
'Collaboration across the chain'
The sector is still evolving. "Scaling up green hydrogen requires collaboration in testing across the chain," says Thijs de Groot, Professor of Electrochemical Engineering at TU Eindhoven. "Actually, all hydrogen plants being built now are still demonstration projects. What is happening there is basically large-scale testing."
In particular, research on the lifetime, reliability and degradation of electrolyzers deserves more attention. "Universities cannot conduct such long-term field tests themselves as companies can with their plants. Without that field data, we simply don't know very well why electrolysers break down and how fast it happens," De Groot said.
There is also a lot of room for improvement in the field of test methods. For instance, there is no uniform standard and there are no best practices. COPE wants to contribute to the harmonisation of test protocols and improve cooperation between companies, knowledge institutes and existing initiatives such as HyPRO.
Building strong test ecosystem
For the coming period, COPE's focus is on developing joint testing protocols, mapping available testing capacity and improving agreements on data exchange and cooperation. An initial inventory of existing test facilities has already been published in a paper.
For GroenvermogenNL and TNO, cooperation is essential to make green hydrogen affordable and scalable faster. "Scaling up requires more than just technology," says Ed Buddenbaum of GroenvermogenNL. "It requires a strong ecosystem in which companies can test, learn and collaborate." Tara van Abkoude of TNO adds: "No single party can develop this market alone. With COPE, we are creating a platform where parties not only share knowledge, but also implement and execute together."
