Australian electrolyser start-up Hysata is to provide engineering data for its technology to be modelled within Intercontinental Energy’s (ICE) platform for giga-scale green hydrogen and fuels projects.
The company will provide design and performance data for its capillary-fed electrolysers to ICE’s P2H2Node, which is being developed as a standardised building block for the company’s wider portfolio of multi-gigawatt green hydrogen projects.
Each 1GW Node is designed to host 800MW of electrolyser capacity, alongside up to 200MW of data centre capacity. ICE also plans to license the architecture to third-party developers.
The collaboration will allow ICE to model how Hysata’s electrolysers, which the company claims can achieve 95% system efficiency, could perform within future large-scale developments before equipment is selected or deployed.
ICE estimates the higher efficiency could allow around 20% more green ammonia to be produced per gigawatt of renewables compared to incumbent electrolyser systems, equivalent to roughly 120,000 additional tonnes per year.
Hysata’s capillary-fed alkaline design uses a wicking membrane to draw electrolyte directly between the electrodes, aiming to reduce electrical resistance and prevent gas bubbles from forming at the electrode surfaces.
“This collaboration enables us to model and optimise Hysata’s ultra-high-efficiency electrolyser technology within the P2H2Node framework, giving developers greater cost and performance certainty for large-scale projects,” said ICE CEO Alex Tancock.
The collaboration comes as ICE advances a more phased development model for its giga-scale hydrogen projects.
At its Australian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) in Western Australia, the developer recently withdrew an environmental assessment covering an earlier 26GW configuration. It is now progressing up to 15GW of approved renewable energy assets, beginning with an initial 1GW phase.
The company is also progressing the 70GW Western Green Energy Hub in Western Australia, where Asian partners joined the project earlier this year ahead of a targeted final investment decision in 2029.
For Hysata, the agreement comes as the firm scales up commercial manufacturing. Earlier this month, the company secured AUD $49m ($34.5m) from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) towards a AUD $98m ($69m) project to establish a 50MW per year commercial electrolyser production line at Port Kembla.
