Historic Snowstorm No Match for Plug Power’s hydrogen and fuel cell solution

Plug Power’s GenFuel infrastructures continue to show reliability – specifically when the devastating winter storm “Jonas” hit the East Coast.. The storm shut down businesses, public transportation and schools across 12 states – but not even one GenDrive.

When faced with extreme weather like Jonas, GenFuel hydrogen infrastructure and GenDrive fuel cells keep working at normal performance levels. Remember, about 90% of a GenFuel hydrogen fueling infrastructure is outside – and a GenDrive can’t operate without fuel. But our rugged systems held up to the elements flawlessly.

The Storm Hits, then what?

Many Plug Power customers still had to serve their customers, shipping food and other goods across the country – stopping operations was not an option. They were relying on their forklift fleet and its GenDrive fuel cell power to continue working as usual despite the conditions outside.

Aware and ready for our customer’s 24/7 business, Plug Power’s intelligent GenCare 24/7 Network Operations Center provides real-time monitoring of every system in our deployed GenDrive and GenFuel fleets, allowing for proactive problem resolution. Plug Power GenCare technicians monitor fleet availability, unit uptime, fuel cell, hydrogen skid and dispenser pressures, and infrastructure in use – in real-time. This allows us to identify a problem before it affects customers, resulting in customer sites running at, or above, our guaranteed 97% uptime.

Our GenCare team even monitors the weather as new storms develop, allowing our team to develop and strategize alternative hydrogen supplies in case of an outage. In anticipation of Jonas, we were preparing for sites to be underwater because of the storm surge, roads to be shut down because of snow or ice or below-zero temperatures freezing components of outdoor systems. Luckily, none of this occurred for our customers.

Our goal is to meet and exceed our guaranteed 97% uptime no matter the circumstances and our GenCare team continues to improve in order to do just that. We’re pleased that our hydrogen fuel cells enabled our customers to work through winter storm Jonas and we’ll always be prepared for the next storm.

POWERAhead