Project AELIOS: Making Clean Hydrogen Truly “Renewable-Ready”

Bridging the Gap in Clean Hydrogen

Clean hydrogen is only as green as the energy used to produce it. However, coupling alkaline electrolyzers directly with intermittent renewable sources—such as wind or solar—presents a major technical hurdle: variable power loads lead to efficiency drops and faster system degradation.

AELIOS is a four-year Horizon Europe project aimed at developing a highly efficient, durable alkaline electrolyzer capable of withstanding dynamic operating conditions without compromising performance or economics.

Key Technical Innovations

To ensure the solution is both scalable and market-ready, AELIOS is combining fundamental laboratory research with system-level validation:

• Advanced Materials & Component Design: Developing novel electrodes and bipolar plates using abundant, easily scalable materials.
• Early System Testing: Testing an initial iteration stack at TECNALIA’s facilities under dynamic loads to analyze real-world degradation mechanisms early on.
• Predictive Modeling: Integrating multi-scale data into a hybrid physics and machine learning lifetime model to optimize material and stack design continuously.
• Final Prototype Validation: Bringing all developments together into a 50–80 kW stack (targeted for TRL 6 validation) that will undergo at least 2,000 hours of continuous testing under demanding operational conditions.

Driven by Market Need

Led by TECNALIA alongside a strong industry-focused consortium—including Stargate Hydrogen, Matgenix, Elchem, RINA, Nano4Energy, and FCC—AELIOS aims to lower both CAPEX and OPEX. By keeping market deployment at the forefront from day one, the consortium is ensuring that its low-cost, scalable solutions can be swiftly commercialized following the project’s conclusion.

Full interview available here: