ITM Power wins £9.3m contract under government net-zero programme

The AIM-traded firm said the contract, under its ‘Net Zero Innovation Portfolio Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply 2’ competition, was to accelerate the commercial deployment of ITM’s 5 MW ‘Gigastack’ platform and its manufacture.

It said the award was for £9.3m, and followed initial designs developed through previous BEIS funding competitions.

The 5 MW Gigastack platform began development in 2019, with the completion of a feasibility study funded by the BEIS Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply Competition.

That was followed by a second phase, also funded by the BEIS Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply Competition, covering two streams - a front-end engineering design (FEED) study for a 100 MW deployment at Phillips 66 and Orsted in the Humber region, and the development and validation of the Gigastack platform.

ITM Power said the second phase concluded in 2021.

As it announced in its half-year results in January, the testing programme for the 5 MW Gigastack platform included both component-level and full-scale evaluation.

Gigastack was 2.5 times larger than ITM Power's previous stack platform, and would undergo “rigorous” testing in representative conditions to validate its performance through real-world conditions, ensuring the technology was ready for large-scale commercialisation.

The fourth-generation stack had “multiple competitive advantages” including lower capital costs and a smaller system footprint.

ITM said those advantages would enhance the stack's ability to operate under flexible conditions when coupled to renewable energy sources, producing green hydrogen at low cost.

Gigatest would also enable the deployment and validation of key manufacturing equipment at the existing Gigafactory and the second, more automated facility on which construction would start later in the year.

The validation would contribute to the subsequent initiation of semi-automated mass-production of electrolyser stacks.

“The UK government has put green hydrogen at the centre of its plans to achieve its legislated net-zero targets,” said chief executive officer Graham Cooley.

“This was underlined by the recent doubling of green hydrogen to 5 GW in the Energy Strategy published last month.

“Awards under competitions like this will ensure that the UK remains a world leader in energy transition technology and manufacture, creating jobs, new supply chains and valuable high-tech exports.”

At 1527 BST, shares in ITM Power were up 2.61% at 307.1p.

Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.