Plug Power establishing green hydrogen facility in Young County

Plug Power, a company which develops hydrogen fuel cell systems, is in the process of establishing a green hydrogen production facility within Young County. The company is working to establish 500 tons of production, which will encompass 13 operating plants, including the plant within Young County.

Plug Power Vice President of Project Development, Brenor Brophy, spoke on the project with area landowners Thursday, Oct. 21, after previously meeting with county and city officials regarding the project. Brophy also met with other officials and The Graham Leader Friday regarding the green hydrogen facility.

Plug Power was looking at several wind farm projects, including the one currently in production in Young County from Apex Clean Energy. Brophy said the wind farm project from Apex Clean Energy, Young Wind, will provide the power for the green hydrogen plant.

“(At the) very end of last year we signed a contract to purchase the power and it’s grown a little bit since then, but basically that is the contractual agreement between Apex and us. We are basically their customer. We buy a good chunk of the energy from that wind plant. Not all of it, but a good chunk of it,” he said.

Apex Clean Energy is also contracted with Plug Power for local development work because of the established contacts they made through their wind farm project.

“So they are working kind of to help us acquire the site, acquire the rights of ways we need (and) all the pieces we need until we’ve got a site to start developing,” Brophy said.

The company is currently looking at several sites for the project with the main issue being the facility required a transmission line from the wind plant and a private transmission water line from the city of Graham wastewater treatment plant. Graham City Manager Brandon Anderson confirmed the company had reached out to the city in order to purchase wastewater runoff.

“Basically all the city (can do with the waste water) is dump it in Salt Creek,” Brophy said in the homeowners meeting Thursday. “At our expense, we are building a (water plant) that takes out the water, it disinfects the water and then it can be used for irrigation purposes. We’re not going to use all of it, we’re going to use about one-third of it for our plant. The other two-thirds is available to the city to do with it what it wants. If it wants to irrigate parks or irrigate school grounds, that water is usable for that purpose. You can’t drink it, you can’t irrigate food crops with it, but you can use it to irrigate grass. They didn’t have that water before, they’ll have it after we’re done. We pay for the infrastructure and (the city of Graham) owns it and they deliver water to our fence line (...) we want the city to be able to benefit from the water. That means we put the water treatment plant at the sewer plant. We’ll pump the water we need from there and the rest the city will use as it wishes.”

The vice president of project development said the county was chosen because of the wind farm resources available and its location in relation to their customers who purchase hydrogen.

“There is a great wind resource here and that wind farm is one the largest that is being built in a single go. But, our customers are folks like Amazon and Walmart, big warehouses. And the warehouses are where the people are so we want to make the hydrogen (and) the further we have to truck it, the more that costs. We always look for locations where they’ve got significant renewable energy resource, but reasonably close to population centers. So it’s Young County basically because this is the biggest furthest east wind farm closest to Dallas, right. And we are close to the Dallas/Fort Worth area so it’s good for that. So that is really that balance, plus if you just look at the community here it’s an area that’s had a lot of oil and gas development over time so there’s a pool of knowledge of working with fuel basically. And so you look at that and you go ‘Okay, we’ll be able to find a workforce here that is not alien to what the people do.’ You go somewhere else where they’ve never had hydrocarbons or fuels and it’s just more of a battle to find people who can do the job,” Brophy said.

The facility which is being proposed will develop 50 tons of hydrogen each day, with each tanker carrying five tons. Brophy said the facility will create a number of jobs locally with the community.

“So it’s about 50 full-time jobs. Half of those are drivers, so those are truck drivers, but with a hazmat certification because when they get to the customer location they have to offload the liquid hydrogen into the customer tanks and so it’s (...) the commercial driving license plus the hazmat,” Brophy said. “The other half are operators and technicians in the factory. We run three shifts 24/7 so you’ve got, if you say, 25 people are drivers, 25 are on site and that maybe is 10 people on day shift and seven on swing and night shift. It’s those kinds of numbers so it’s not a lot of people at any one time so it’s not like there’s a commute of traffic going to the plant. Our average salary is about $70,000 a year so it’s relatively high paid. It’s vocational-level jobs, so it’s high school plus some training (...). You don’t need a bachelor’s degree to go do this. We anticipate that it will be locals that are hired (and) we are not having to ship people in to do it.”

For the rest of the story, see the Oct. 30 edition of The Graham Leader.