The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last week announced the winners of the first Hydrogen Business Case Prize Competition. Part of the American-Made Challenges series, which incentivizes entrepreneurship and innovation in the energy marketplace, the competition challenged teams to develop practical financial analysis tools that address hydrogen energy production and adoption challenges.
The first-place prize of $50,000 was awarded to Super Hydrogen Brothers for a Hydrogen Business Appraisal Tool (HBAT) to consolidate state-of-the-art technologies and determine how practical each one will be given the user’s parameter preferences. The $30,000 second-place winner was Bend Hydrogen, whose Biomass gasification Optimal Business Case Analysis Tool (BOBCAT) evaluates the business case analysis for hydrogen production from gasification.
Pure Hydrogen won the $30,000 third-place prize for its H2X model that analyzes business feasibility and environmental impacts for different configurations of green hydrogen production. Fourth place and $20,000 was awarded to H24SCR, which developed a Probability of Hydrogen Integration (Phi) tool to calculate the viability of hydrogen production in a given location.
The winning tools have real-world applications for scaling up the production and deployment of hydrogen, an important source of clean energy and an essential part of the efforts to build a net-zero emissions economy.
This competition is supported by EERE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office. Learn more about EERE’s hydrogen and fuel cells technology work and visit American-Made Challenges for information about this and future competitions.
Congratulations to the winners the Hydrogen Business Case Prize! Each of these four teams successfully developed a new tool that characterizes business cases for hydrogen in user-defined scenarios, accounting for multiple end-use applications and key drivers of profitability, such as energy prices and infrastructure and hydrogen production costs.
The winning teams are:
- First Place: Super Hydrogen Brothers | $50,000
Hydrogen Business Appraisal Tool (HBAT) to consolidate state-of-the-art technologies and determine how practical each one will be given the user’s parameter preferences.
- Second Place: Bend Hydrogen | $30,000
Biomass gasification Optimal Business Case Analysis Tool (BOBCAT) to evaluate the business case analysis for hydrogen production from gasification.
- Third Place: Pure Hydrogen | $30,000
H2X model to analyze business feasibility and environmental impacts for different configurations of green hydrogen production.
- Fourth Place: H24SCR | $20,000
Probability of Hydrogen Integration (Phi) tool to calculate the viability of hydrogen production in a given location.
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