Canada is a well-established global leader for innovative hydrogen solutions. This is due to contributions from companies such as Ballard Power (leading global fuel cell company), Hydrogenics (acquired by Cummins and Air Liquide) and Stuart Energy (merged with Hydrogenics).
Our team members Dr. Jim Hinatsu and Dr. Michael Stemp led R&D initiatives at Stuart Energy prior to co-founding Next Hydrogen in 2007. The company’s other co-founders included successful renewable energy entrepreneurs. The efforts of Dr. Hinatsu and Dr. Stemp were supported by Matthew Fairlie who previously served as CTO of Stuart Energy, Vice Chair of National Hydrogen Association in Washington and Chair of Canadian Hydrogen Business Council.
From the start, our proven and experienced technology development team targeted the high cost of hydrogen generation from electricity sources, including renewable energy at scale. They realized that while some of the world’s brightest minds with strong capital resources were focused on improving cell materials and components, advances in the cell design architecture had garnered very little attention. As a result, the conventional alkaline water electrolyser design used to this day has not changed in several decades and resembles the process used for chemicals production (where hydrogen is a by-product). The key issue with the traditional design remains. It was purpose-built to work with steady electricity input and hence, has low operational flexibility. This has its limitations especially when connected with renewable energy resources where availability and pricing vary during the course of the day due to demand.
Our team with a combined 60+ years in water electrolysis has dedicated the last 12 years to revolutionizing the design architecture of the electrolyser and has been awarded 39 patents (more pending) across multiple jurisdictions. Our break-through innovation in cell design architecture provides unprecedented operational flexibility to capture the entire output of intermittent renewable energy using significantly smaller or fewer units than a traditional electrolyser solution.