Hanneke Weitering is a writer and editor with AIN covering advanced air mobility and new flight technologies. She became an aviation journalist and joined the AIN team in the summer of 2022 after reporting on spaceflight and astronomy for six years at Space.com. After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she moved to New York City to pursue a master’s degree in science, health, and environmental reporting at New York University&#039;s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She is now based in Seattle near Boeing Field and spends her free time exploring nature in the Pacific Northwest.

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Hanneke Weitering

ZeroAvia claims it can slash the cost of hydrogen production by at least 20% using software powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
The hydrogen propulsion systems and ground infrastructure developer this week introduced software that it says reduces the levelized cost of a hydrogen production operation by at least 20% using the same kind of algorithms that manage electrical microgrids running on renewable energy. (Levelized cost refers to the average net cost of energy generation over the lifetime of a production plant.)
To validate the so-called Smart Hydrogen AI Production Software (SHAIPS) in a real-world setting, ZeroAvia deployed the software on an energy microgrid at its testing facilities in Hollister, California. The company makes its own hydrogen fuel there through electrolysis, using electricity from renewable sources to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
ZeroAvia founder and CEO Val Miftakhov brought in a team of experienced engineers from his previous company JuiceNet, which develops software for electric vehicle charging stations, to develop similar optimization software for hydrogen production plants that use renewable energy to generate and store hydrogen.
“Our innovation was around smart charging of electric vehicles to provide the energy-balancing capability for renewable energy,” Miftakhov told AIN. “The basic problem with renewable energies is that you have solar [power] when the sun shines, you have wind energy when the wind blows, but what about when that doesn't happen? You need storage.”
In ZeroAvia’s case, it wants to store renewable energy in hydrogen fuel cells and use smart microgrid management software to optimize hydrogen-production operations and reduce costs.
When ZeroAvia tested the SHAIPS software at its microgrid in California, the company found that it reduced the levelized cost of hydrogen production by more than 20% compared with electrolyzers that only take into account the average wholesale price of electricity.
In contrast, ZeroAvia’s software has “pretty robust predictive algorithms for pricing, renewable energy production, and behavior of your battery and electrolyzer assets,” Miftakhov explained. “That's where we applied AI models on all those things and have shown that we can extract much higher performance compared to the simple rule-based algorithms that people have done before.”
Using ZeroAvia’s approach, excess renewable energy can be stored as hydrogen gas or sold back to the electric grid. Whenever there’s a dearth of renewable energy—as in, when there’s not enough sunshine or wind—it can also draw electricity from the grid in order to keep on producing hydrogen.
Following the successful testing of its software at home, ZeroAvia is now preparing to start demonstrating the system in the Seattle area, where it recently opened a manufacturing site dubbed the <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/futureflight/2024-04-26/zeroavia-offers-hydrogen-electric-component-manufacturing">Propulsion Center of Excellence</a>.

SHAIPS can also help hydrogen producers set a limit on the carbon intensity of their operations, which allows them to benefit from government subsidies. In the U.S., both federal and state-level tax incentives have already helped to reduce the cost of hydrogen production.
The U.S. Department of Energy aims to bring the cost of hydrogen production down to $1 per kilogram of hydrogen by 2030. To that end, last year it invested $47 billion in clean hydrogen production, storage, and delivery projects.
Passed in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act established a tax credit of up to $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced, depending on the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions a facility emits in the process. Hydrogen plants with a smaller carbon footprint are eligible for higher tax credits than those with more carbon-intensive operations.

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ZeroAvia Cuts Hydrogen Production Costs with Artificial Intelligence

Real-world tests demonstrated a 20% cost reduction

ZeroAvia claims it can slash the cost of hydrogen production by at least 20% using software powered by artificial intelligence.

ZeroAvia Cuts Hydrogen Production Costs with AI Software

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