Plug Power Gives Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Presentation at World of Energy Event in Germany

Plug Power recently raced into the European material handling market at full speed. It took us no time to attract the spotlight – this time speaking at the World of Energy Solutions conference in Stuttgart, Germany. Plug Power’s European director of sales, Tim Schultz, delivered a riveting presentation titled “Hydrogen Fuel Cells: commercially viable, proven power for material handling applications”.

Here are some of highlights from Tim’s World of Energy Solutions presentation:

• Plug Power products operate more hours in a year than a passenger vehicle will see in a lifetime – that’s an impressive accomplishment.
• The market for Plug Power’ solutions in Europe is large – like $20B large. Plug Power offers a full suite of more than 80 products for today’s European lift trucks, and the conversion to fuel cell mirrors the elegant simplicity witnessed in North America.
• Many of our customers are global, thus success seen at U.S. automotive manufacturing sites, like BMW, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz, opens the door for global expansion of fuel cell use.

The same value proposition applies to both North American and European markets. In short, we help make customer operations more productive and sustainable, saving them time and money.

• Productivity improvements are very important, particularly in countries with high labor and electricity costs.
• Sustainability initiatives are important to many European companies, especially for auto manufacturers who have very clear goals set by the European Union to meet emissions standards.

Plug Power’s international business development and sales teams are currently working with vehicle manufacturing customers in Europe, including the UK, Germany, and Spain, to broaden the use of GenDrive and GenKey. For more than 95 percent of the forklift trucks in the world, Plug Power can drop in an existing GenDrive product and convert that battery-powered truck to a hydrogen fuel cell-powered truck in ten minutes.

Tim did a tremendous job of helping the audience understand the productivity improvements customers see when switching from battery recharging to simple hydrogen refueling, enabling lift trucks to fill up and return to work in three minutes – compared to 25 minutes for a battery change and 6-12 hours for recharging. Refueling is simple – truck operators pull up to conveniently located fueling dispensers and, in just minutes, are back on the floor.

Presentations like Tim’s help Plug Power European customers, such as Prelodis, understand the true ease and benefits of adopting a hydrogen and fuel cell solution for a European lift truck fleet. GenKey packages are available to European customers and remain an attractive way to ensure quick, easy and successful deployments. GenKey was, in fact, founded on customer trust. Plug Power acts as a single-source vendor, handling the power, fuel storage & dispensing infrastructure, and aftermarket service integration, so customers can focus on putting their new-found productivity to use.