A year ago, Truck & Bus Builder visited Intelligent Energy Ltd, a Loughborough-based developer of fuel cell systems for a range of applications including aircraft, marine, and drones. At this year’s Cenex Expo, held at Millbrook Proving Ground between 3-4 September, the company showcased the fruits of a project it led to develop a system suited to the demands of heavy-duty transportation.

On 30 September 2024, Britain’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar was closed down. Opened in 1968, the power station had a capacity of 2,000 MW and annual carbon emissions in the millions of tonnes when it was decommissioned. Today, local authorities and consortia have new ambitions for the old plants: to repurpose the existing infrastructure for the production of green hydrogen. That was the message carried away by news reporters who attended an open day at the Loughborough University campus on 8 November. Visitors got to see some mature products of the transition taking place in the east midlands. These were the fuel-cell-powered vehicles displayed by Intelligent Energy Ltd in front of its headquarters on the edge of the campus.

Cenex is the UK’s premier event for the future of mobility, combining insights from the Low Carbon Vehicle (LCV) and Connected Automated Mobility (CAM) sectors.

The proof-of-concept vehicle was assembled, deployed and tested at the MIRA Technology Park in Nuneaton, UK. The prototype is expected to be tested by operators and OEMs during the rest of 2024.

The exhibition, which took place from the 6th to the 7th of September, attracted over 150 exhibitors involved in low-carbon mobility. The exhibition had a small collection of companies dedicated to the commercial vehicle market sector.

The project aims to build a commercially competitive 44-tonne proof of concept Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFC) heavy goods tractor unit. With funding from the UK’s Advanced Propulsion Centre, project ICEBreaker is set to begin next month (October 2023) with the aim of developing lighter, more efficient hydrogen fuel cell Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) with a lower cost of ownership.

The IE-Drive 100 hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) utilises the company’s “patented evaporatively cooled (EC) technology”, whilst the hydrogen fuel cell stack delivers 155kW of power. In terms of the architecture, the design is centred around ‘blending’ the desired performance with the space constraints of LCVs. IE stated the HFC is currently being tested with various UK partners.