Hydrogen electrolyser maker Ohmium officially opens new 2GW gigafactory in India
The US-headquartered company already has a global project pipeline of more than 2GW for its ‘unique hyper modular PEM electrolysers’
US-based, India-focused electrolyser maker Ohmium has officially opened its new 2GW gigafactory near the Indian city of Bengaluru (also known as Bangalore), almost three years after the plan was first announced.
The manufacturer — which is headquartered in California, but does its manufacturing in India — says it already has “a global green hydrogen project pipeline of more than 2GW across three continents”, but it is not clear what proportion of this represents firm orders.
While the new gigafactory gives Ohmium one of the largest electrolyser manufacturing capacities in the world, the company is not in the global top ten for orders, according to recent analysis by Indian consultancy VNZ Insights, raising questions as to how much of Ohmium’s 2GW of production lines will be utilised in the near term.
However, Time magazine recently put Ohmium in second place on its list of America’s top green-tech companies.
“Covering close to 14,000 square meters of production space, the state-of-the-art manufacturing facility is ramping up to ship 2 gigawatts (GW) of fully assembled and tested electrolyzer systems to meet the demands of Ohmium’s global project pipeline,” the company states in a press release.
Ohmium chief operating officer Ashwin Varma adds: “Ohmium’s unique hyper modular PEM electrolyzers are designed for mass production and easy assembly. By implementing the best practices of standardized, high quality and efficient manufacturing, we can build systems that achieve superior performance at a very competitive cost.”
The new gigafactory has been built with enough space to be able to quickly ramp up to 4GW of annual manufacturing capacity.
“With this standardized approach, our factory production can scale up quickly to meet growing demand, with additional cost savings as capacity expands,” Varma adds.
The company adds that its “modular interlocking PEM electrolyzers… can be easily stacked to significantly reduce installation and maintenance costs and the standardised design enables rapid scaling from megawatts to gigawatts” and that its “dynamic ramping capabilities [are] optimal for pairing with renewable electricity”.
In March, Ohmium was awarded more than 2bn rupees ($24m) in subsidies for electrolyser manufacturing in India.