Imagine a world where your home runs on its own clean, self-sufficient energy system. No fossil fuels, just pure green power. This is the vision of H2greenPlanet GmbH, an engineering team with deep expertise in building hydrogen fuel cell stacks and complete energy setups.
They build compact power plants designed to provide independent energy for private households (starting at 10kW) and mid-scale production facilities (up to 200kW). Every product they make is a precise, finely tuned machine. To make these systems more affordable and resilient against global supply chain issues, H2greenPlanet joined forces with the CLEANHYPRO project.
The Challenge: Saving Precious Materials
Hydrogen machines (known as electrolysers and fuel cells) rely on rare, expensive precious metals like Platinum (Pt) and Iridium (Ir) to help trigger chemical reactions. Because these materials cost so much, green energy can be expensive to manufacture.
H2greenPlanet set out to see if they could replace standard parts with next-generation components that use a fraction of these costly metals – without losing any power performance.
The Innovation: Sifting Out the Cost
Working inside the CLEANHYPRO ecosystem, H2greenPlanet teamed up with research partners TNO and VSParticle. Together, they used ultra-precise, advanced coating techniques (called sALD and Spark Ablation) to apply incredibly thin layers of catalyst materials.
Because the new parts had a drastically lower amount of platinum and iridium, the physical characteristics changed. H2greenPlanet used advanced digital computer models to predict exactly how these thin, highly efficient parts would behave inside a real system. By adjusting the stiffness and thickness of the internal support elements, they ensured the entire system could run smoothly and safely.
The Results: High Power, Lower Cost
The trial was a massive success. When tested on a specialized rig at the Fraunhofer ISE facilities, the newly designed stack achieved a phenomenal performance of up to 2.5 A/cm² at 1.9 V.
What does this mean in plain English? It proves that we can successfully slash the amount of expensive, rare metals used in hydrogen setups while keeping the power output remarkably high. By perfecting this coating technology, H2greenPlanet can drive down manufacturing costs significantly.
What’s Next?
H2greenPlanet is not stopping here. They plan to continue using these low-material coating methods to drop platinum layers from the standard 0.5 mg/cm² right down to just 0.1 mg/cm².
Looking ahead to Q3 2026, the team plans to assemble and run a brand-new testing stack at Fraunhofer ISE using even further improved parts from TNO and VSParticle. They expect this next version to show higher operating stability, more uniform cell performance, and even better electrical current densities.
Ultimately, lowering these manufacturing costs will make green hydrogen accessible to the wider public, helping all of us transition to a sustainable energy future.
Author(s):
Björn Ahrendt & Kemal Özer
Partner organisation:
