From thought-provoking to life-saving, GenCell engaged a rapt audience with truly sustainable and resilient energy solutions

Austin, TX – May 24th  2024 – On Tuesday May 21^st, GenCell^® hosted a first U.S. demonstration of the Company’s revolutionary hydrogen fuel products, GenCell EVOX^® and GenCell REX™. GenCell Inc., the U.S.-based subsidiary of GenCell Ltd., (TASE: GNCL), a leading provider of Hydrogen2Power™ technologies, announced the U.S. rollout of the company’s EVOX multipurpose distributed energy resource (DER) power solution combining energy storage and hydrogen-fueled on-site power generation to supplement the grid day-to-day for EV charging and to in parallel provide backup power for facilities, critical EV fleets and reliable, long-duration portable power for emergencies.

The Hydrogen2Power event, held at the Palmer Center in Austin, TX, drew over one hundred attendees from organizations as diverse as The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality, GE Vernova, the University of Texas at Austin, and the City of Austin Fire Department. All were on hand to learn about the sustainability and resilience challenges facing the U.S. energy sector and to preview how the GenCell EVOX^® and GenCell REX™ products contribute to resolving these issues.

The day – taking place only days after thunderstorms caused power outages affecting over a million customers in the Houston area – kicked off with a keynote address about the challenges for Texas to achieve resilience by Karl Popham, Chair of the Electric Vehicle Leadership Council and founder of Mobility+Energy Consulting LLC. Popham discussed meeting the key power challenge of reliability – which talks in seconds, minutes and hours – by describing his experience establishing a hybrid microgrid; next he suggested meeting the challenge of resiliency – which talks in hours, days and weeks – by adding a second phase to the microgrid incorporating new technologies such as hydrogen.

Next up was held a thought-provoking panel on energy and climate resilience moderated by Andrew Higgins, Chair of the Board at TxETRA, featuring Ken Snipes, Director of Austin’s Office of Homeland Security; Jay Joseph, VP, Sustainability & Business Development, American Honda; Brian Hoff, VP Product Management, GE Vernova; Teesee Murray, Turtle Chief Strategist and President, TurtleX, and Michael Lewis, Sr. Research Engineer/Scientist at the University of Texas. The panelists shared their insights on the constraints limiting grid resilience, the need for innovation and the potential of hydrogen to overcome the constraints.

“The potential of hydrogen is just starting to be realized. Hydrogen is a great enabler of renewables on our grid, for bottling the wind and solar, transporting, exporting and moving it around the world,” explained panelist Jay Joseph, American Honda Motor. ”The energy density of hydrogen, its storability and transportability lends itself really well to solving that problem and that’s a big part of the future we envision. That’s why we are excited about the relationship with GenCell because it helps enable that vision of generating, storing, transporting, and then utilizing hydrogen when and where it’s needed.”

Added Teesee Murray from Turtle Inc., “Hydrogen offers the best resilience with the lowest environmental impact and when we talk about social justice and how we can improve the human condition for everybody, hydrogen is the answer – it’s green business, it’s good business.”

Following the panel GenCell CEO Rami Reshef presented to the delighted crowd how the EVOX and REX technologies can help bridge the power gap and deliver agile resilient power wherever first responders require it when disasters happen, keeping EV fleets and facilities operationally ready 24/7.

“Our journey is driven by a bold vision: to realize a comprehensive, emission-free energy future. In the first phase we focused on Hydrogen2Power technology,” said Reshef.  “We are powering commercial applications with long-lasting tested backup solutions, tailored for even the most remote or extreme conditions. The conversations and connections made here today are just the beginning.”

Continued Reshef, “GenCell harnesses the elements to generate power that is both Resilient and Sustainable – it doesn’t have to be a tradeoff – to deliver zero-emission, distributed energy wherever the grid is instable or insufficient, empowering the world for future generations.”

The event also showcased live demos of the REX auxiliary DC power solution for utility substations, the containerized EVOX hydrogen-fueled long-duration DER solution, including a demonstration of the EVOX charging a Ford Lightning truck and a demo of GenCell’s GEMS™ proprietary DERMS software that optimizes the performance and economics of operating GenCell solutions.

Event attendees came away with not just a better understanding of how GenCell hydrogen fuel technology works, but how attainable a truly sustainable and resilient energy system can be.

“Capturing solar and wind in a bottle, this demonstration showed a lot of promise,” said Amy Atchley, EV Equity Development Manager for Austin Energy. “The conversations featured an emphasis on powering critical locations, decarbonizing transportation, providing renewable energy access to vulnerable communities and more. Experiencing the show and tell of the life-size very quiet, clean generator that was charging-up an EV on-site made it feel real and was inspiring! Exciting stuff! It will take much collaboration between multiple stakeholders and entities for infrastructure deployment and affordability.”

For more information, you can watch a recording of the event here.