Reliance Industries steadily moves towards green energy with two new partners – Stiesdal and NexWafe

Reliance Industries is slowly stepping towards green energy. In recent deals to achieve to its green goal, Reliance announced a collaboration with Denmark-based Stiesdal that has technology for producing g hydrogen electrolyzers and acquire stake in NexWafe provides access to wafer technology for solar photovoltaic modules.

RIL aims to spend US$10bn over the next three years in (1) Integrated Solar Photovoltaic Module factory, (2) Advanced Energy Storage Battery factory for storage of intermittent energy, (3) Electrolyser factory for production of green hydrogen, and (4) Fuel Cell factory for converting hydrogen into motive and stationary power.

With the collaboration with Stiesdal, Reliance aims to produce Hydrogen electrolyzers for India which produce green hydrogen. The company operates at a more cost-efficient process than its peers which will contribute to RIL’s aim to provide green hydrogen at US $1/kg which is much lesser than industry cost of US $5/kg. To support this bias, Stiesdal’s HydroGen claims to convert electricity to hydrogen at a cheaper rate than other electrolysis technologies on the market. RIL may also extend an agreement with Stiesdal for fuel cells that convert hydrogen to electricity.

NexWafe deals in developing wafers which are an intermediate process in development of solar cells and modules. NexWafe manufactures cost-efficient and energy-efficient wafter made out of silicon instead of expensive and materials such as polysilicon production and ingot pulling RIL’s stake acquisition in the company will help RIL to get access to wafer technology and create end-to-end manufacturing of components in solar energy value chain.

RIL has also invested 25 million euros in Series C funding of NexWafe. This investment done under India Strategic Partnership Agreement will allow both the countries to develop high-efficiency monocrystalline “green solar wafers” with NexWafe's proprietary technology and processes and commercialize it.