'World's most powerful hydrogen fuel cell' on track for H1 2024 launch

The ongoing three-year development of its heavy-duty marine 400-kW fuel-cell module includes built-in gas safety features for seamless integration on board a ship to enable zero-emissions energy generation.

Over the past few months, the company has built and installed the FCM400 into the test bench in Graz, Austria, where the goal has been to utilise the FCM400 to produce electricity from hydrogen. The first hydrogen has now been injected into the fuel-cell module, validating the technology performance.

“A fuel cell is the next generation of engines and power generators, where hydrogen is the fuel,” said TECO 2030 chief executive Tore Enger. 

He added, “A remarkable accomplishment, our FCM400 system has officially been tested with hydrogen and produced electricity as expected and the performance data collected proves we have outperformed our own expectations.” 

“The road to a better and more sustainable future is becoming clearer and clearer to us as we reached this enormous milestone in our company’s history.” 

The system will undergo further testing, with an eye on deploying the first system H1 2024. Manual production of FCM400 systems will continue at the technology development partner AVL in Graz for the next few units before moving the production to Narvik in Norway, H1 2024. 

The Narvik site is already well underway with manual production of fuel-cell stacks. By 2030, TECO hopes to produce 4,000 units per year at this factory.

Earlier this year, the company was awarded €2.3M (US$2.4M) in EU funding towards building and demonstrating its fuel cells aboard a passenger ferry as part of the EU’s wider Horizon Innovation Action.

This is the company’s second Horizon Europe project; TECO 2030 is also part of the EU-funded HyEkoTank project for which its Narvik-based team is producing fuel-cell stacks. The company is currently making 100-kW fuel-cell stacks and will build up capacity towards the megawatt range by 2024.