Nevada-based hydrogen electrolyser maker Ohmium International has raised $45m in Series B financing, which will be used to quadruple annual production — from 500MW to 2GW — at its sole factory, in Bangalore, India.

Hydrogen: hype, hope and the hard truths around its role in the energy transition
Will hydrogen be the skeleton key to unlock a carbon-neutral world? Subscribe to Accelerate Hydrogen, powered by Recharge and Upstream, and get the market insight you need for this rapidly evolving global market.

“This funding allows us to expand our manufacturing capacity toward the approximately 2GW per year target by the end of this year,” said Ohmium CEO Arne Ballantine. “Our sales have been growing very rapidly, and increasing the manufacturing capacity is critical to meeting the current and the near-term future demand in the rapidly expanding market.”

The news comes days after Belgian manufacturer John Cockerill announced plans to build a 2GW electrolyser factory in India.

The Ohmium funding round was led by existing investor, California-based venture capitalist Fenice Investment Group, whose managing director Ahmad Chatila is also chairman of Ohmium, with participation from other current investors and new participant, Houston-based Energy Transition Ventures (ETV).

“The world has been waiting for cost-effective green hydrogen to usher in the hydrogen economy,” said Chatila. “Ohmium now has the resources and the manufacturing capacity to make it a reality today for customers worldwide.”

Chatila previously said that he believed Ohmium electrolysers would be able to produce green hydrogen for less than $1/kg by 2025.

Craig Lawrence, partner at ETV, was even more effusive. “Ohmium... is running the winning green hydrogen playbook — high volume, low cost modular manufacturing of PEM electrolysers to supply the global market,” he said.

“In a world where renewable power costs are cheaper than even the fuel for fossil power, green hydrogen is poised to transform energy and industrial markets.”

Ohmium says that its PEM electrolyser performs better than rivals’ technology due to its use of electrochemical compression and a solid and thin electrolyte membrane that minimises losses, which enables its machines to “run at a very high current density [that] enhances cost-effective operation”.