This audio is brought to you by Wearcheck, your condition monitoring specialist.

When Engineering News & Mining Weekly covered last month's local launch of BMW's first hydrogen car fleet on South Africa's roads, we discovered that BMW's hydrogen refilling station in Midrand is powered by Elemental Energy's off-grid hydrogen power system, which has a crucial Toyota fuel cell underpin.

Interestingly, we now learn that Elemental Energy is on a major mission to build hydrogen power systems in developing countries in particular.

"We are just at the beginning of seeing the many applications of green hydrogen play out globally, and we think stationary power is one of the most important to get right," Elemental Energy's Dereck Armstrong told Mining Weekly in a note ahead of our Zoom interview on March 7. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Already operating in South Africa on grid, solar, battery and hydrogen is Elemental Energy's 100 kW system at Jaci's Lodges in the Madikwe Game Reserve in North West province, a demonstrator that is already attracting considerable attention from the mining and agriculture sectors. The hydrogen for that site was produced on a nearby commercial farm and delivered in trailer units by Elemental Energy, which sees itself as an integrator of hydrogen technology that has Toyota's automotive fuel cells in its power units.

"Toyota have been a great partner and deliver a truly high-performing and tested piece of kit," said Armstrong, who views hydrogen supply for stationary power as the leading use case for developing green hydrogen supply in many regions.

This coincides with a comment made this week by the World Platinum Investment Council, which forecasts that stationary hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen electrolysers will increase demand for platinum by more than 120% this year.

Toyota uses platinum-catalysed fuel cells and Elemental Energy is mulling the potential use of platinum-based proton exchange membrane (PEM) for some sites.

"Green hydrogen can already be produced at prices that compete with diesel on a dollar per kilowatt hour basis and it is only going to become more competitive over the next few years," said Armstrong.

"We see hydrogen supply for stationary power being the leading use case for developing green hydrogen supply in many regions. With green hydrogen supply and demand coming online at the same time to replace diesel, the added benefit of a local supply is provided that can also be used to add vehicles or other hydrogen use cases as offtakers from the same infrastructure.

"We're just at the beginning of seeing the many applications of green hydrogen play out globally, and we think stationary power is one of the most important to get right, especially in Africa," Armstrong said.

Adding storage capacity for hydrogen, a transportable renewable fuel, is relatively cheap and a fuel cell with gas storage can deliver long-duration energy.

"Our solution is actually an integrated solar/wind, battery and hydrogen system to deliver a cost-effective hybridisation of these technologies.

"We see ourselves as a technology integrator, which, when it comes to hydrogen, involves a fair bit of intellectual property and expertise itself.

"We work with some of the leading technology suppliers of electrolysis, compressors, hydrogen storage, batteries, inverters, and fuel cells and build the systems and controls to get all of these working together smoothly.

"Our core system is a smart power station that looks similar to a big diesel generator but is actually a lot more than that. It really becomes the brains and controls of all the power supply and storage on site.

"We also integrate hydrogen storage cylinders into a smaller trailer design that we build and assemble ourselves. This allows us to move hydrogen around quite efficiently for low distance, high frequency distribution.

"The hydrogen fuel cell does the job typically done by a diesel generator. The fuel cell chemically recombines hydrogen ...