Production of clean energy using sources available within the European Union is more important than ever. Equally important is to strengthen EU’s ability to produce hydrogen without using fossil natural gas. The transition from fossil, imported energy sources to clean, domestic energy sources and hydrogen production needs to happen in a way that the citizens of the European Union can find acceptable without excessive economic burden. Solid Oxide Cell (SOC) technology answers these challenges by enabling:
1. Usage of domestic, underutilized energy sources such as biogas with Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC),
2. High-efficiency hydrogen production using Solid Oxide Electrolyser (SOE) and
3. Providing means to control electricity demand/production, and therefore the electricity cost, by modulating hydrogen production based on availability of wind & solar power.
AMPS will develop, demonstrate and validate in actual production lines mass-manufacturing and quality control methods to produce SOC components and stacks at low cost and at high volumes by bringing together the leading European companies. The project is motivated by partner's strong commitment to develop their products and services and commence real mass-manufacturing.
The high-level AMPS objectives are:
1. Automated high-speed cell production with integrated quality control
2. Automated high-speed interconnect plate production and coating with integrated quality control
3. Automated high-speed stack assembly with integrated quality control
4. Complete component tracking and optimized mass-manufacturing by using virtual twins
5. Assessment and demonstration of target stack manufacturing cost of <800 €/kWel at production volume of 100 MW/year
6. Establish European supply chain of SOC manufacturing equipment.
AMPS proceeds beyond the state-of-art by developing several automated solutions for manufacturing with significant reduction in cycle times thus allowing scale-up of stack production for higher than100 MW annual volumes.
