Estonian energy company Alexela and cleantech start-up PowerUP Energy Technologies, unveiled the first-ever Smart Hydrogen cabinet at Alexela’s refilling station at the Kakumäe harbour, in Estonia’s capital Tallinn.
The first of its kind smart hydrogen cabinet is targeted towards small application users of hydrogen including sailing boats, yachts, and campervans. To show the mobility of the smart cabinet, it will soon be shifted to a more commercial harbour in Tallinn located in Pirita.
The smart cabinet is fully automated and filled with lightweight hydrogen cylinders, provided by PowerUP Energy Technologies. With almost no human contact, it will be operated by a mobile payments system application called Paytailor, which makes mobile payments easy for its customers. In addition to this, the application provides its customers with a seamless experience of operating the smart cabinet. The customers can open the smart cabinet, choose the number of hydrogen tanks they want to rent and make the payment, all via the application.
Powered by solar panels, the cabinet is a smart way for sailors, campervan owners, or any other small application users of hydrogen to easily rent out hydrogen cylinders using an app.
“Hydrogen has a promising role to play in achieving decarbonisation targets globally,” said Ivar Kruusenberg, Founder and CEO at PowerUP Energy Technologies during the launch. “With hydrogen presence in Estonia being fairly limited due to lack of large-scale hydrogen production in the country as well as very few fuel cells implemented in real applications, this smart hydrogen cabinet will be the first step in Estonia’s energy transition to the most sought-after clean energy fuel – Hydrogen. Through this collaboration, we are reassuring our commitment to provide clean and safe energy solutions for everyone.”
The launch of the pilot hydrogen smart cabinet in Estonia is a simple and cost-effective solution to hydrogen distribution and based on the response from the customers in Estonia, it is planned to be duplicated in other European countries as well.
“The hydrogen solution presented with PowerUP is an example of how the value chain of hydrogen is actually doable,” added Marti Hääl, Executive Vice President of the Estonian energy company Alexela. “The task today regarding hydrogen is to get enough consumers to spur the production in order to achieve competitive value for the consumers. But definitely, we at Alexela are ready for hydrogen entering the transport sector wider.”
