Dem Dutchies! Wooden shoes, wooden heads, wooden listen… as the saying goes. Except this time they did, looking to Canada for a critical piece of technology to help meet their Net Zero emissions targets in the construction of one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms..Vancouver-based Ballard Power Systems on Monday announced an order for a fuel cell system to CrossWind, a joint-venture between Shell and Eneco to be integrated in the Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind project. Bonus points if you can pronounce it. You kind of have to roll it off your tongue for proper effect. .Located about 20 klicks offshore the quaint west coast town of Egmond aan Zee — all Dutch towns are quaint — the offshore wind project will have a capacity of 759 MW to generate at least 3.3 TWh per year — that’s trillions of kilowatt hours — enough renewable power to supply the equivalent of more than 1 million Dutch households with green electricity. Read that bottom line again. .The Dutch — famous for windmills, and to a lesser extent, water — are known for ambitious infrastructure projects to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Ever since a global warming period in the 1400s washed away half the country and changed the course of its rivers, including the Amstel. What did the Dutchies do? They built a dam, called it Amsterdam and declared a tax exempt free trade zone and invented the stock market. Indeed, the dykes are some of the oldest public infrastructure projects in the world which has had an indelible effect on the evolution of their democracy. (That’s another story.).Fast forward 500 years and the innovation never stops. In construction of the Hollandse Kust Noord project, Dutch engineers — who are highly underrated compared to their German peers, who only invented the modern jet fighter and intercontinental ballistic missile — were confronted with the basic engineering problem of keeping the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow..The solution? One of Ballard’s relatively small — probably about the size of a four-plex in Bowness — modular units that will be floated out to sea. It will use hydrolysis to convert seawater to hydrogen in order to power the fuel cell..Make no mistake, it isn’t cheap. According to some estimates typical efficiencies of electrolyzers lie between 75 and 80%. In the case of a reconversion of hydrogen into electricity through fuel cells, another 50% of the energy is lost as heat, resulting in an overall process efficiency of 35%. On the bright side, fuel cells can run on natural gas, ammonia or good old whole grain liquor and moonshine. The Dutch are also famous for inventing London Dry Gin..It may not be necessary. In February of last year Ballard itself, on its website, suggested the cost of maintaining hydrogen fuel cells has dropped some 65% over the past decade and is on pace to fall another 70-80% in the next ten. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but at an installed cost of about $10,000 per kilowatt hour, the deal is potentially worth tens of millions of dollars to the Vancouver based TSX-listed company. It’s the second such system they’ve sold to date..Not surprisingly, Ballard shares (TSE:BLDP) were up about 8% on the Toronto Stock Exchange today, to $8.33.
