The CHARGE project started in December 2025. Over the next 36 months, six partners from Denmark, Germany and Poland will work on a single problem: solid oxide electrolysis converts electricity into hydrogen more efficiently than any competing technology, but the stacks are expensive and they do not last long enough.
A solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) splits steam at around 700 °C. At that temperature it reaches roughly 20 % higher power-to-hydrogen efficiency than alkaline or PEM electrolysis, at competitive capital cost. What holds it back is lifetime. Electrodes degrade, the steel interconnects between cells grow resistive oxide scales and evaporate chromium that poisons the oxygen electrode, and dynamic operation on renewable power makes both worse. CHARGE addresses these failure routes at the level of the cell, the interconnect and the stack — and adds a fourth idea: a different way of driving current through the stack.
Four objectives
- Impurity-tolerant, durable cells. Real steam carries impurities. The target is SOEC cells that degrade less than 0.3 %/kh at high current density, 1–1.5 A/cm².
- Low-cost coated interconnects. Interconnects can account for more than three quarters of stack cost. CHARGE replaces specialty alloys with generic 430-grade steel carrying a coating free of critical raw materials, applied by electroplating. Target: area-specific resistance ≤ 20 mΩ·cm² and chromium evaporation ≤ 2×10−5 mg/cm²·h after 1000 h at 700 °C in air, at 70 % lower cost than the current benchmark.
- AC:DC operation. Superimposing an alternating current on the DC electrolysis current periodically relieves the electrodes. CHARGE aims to demonstrate voltage degradation below 0.3 %/kh on industrial stacks at up to 0.75 A/cm².
- Advanced stacks. Bringing the improved cells, interconnects and operating strategy together in stacks running at 1–1.5 A/cm² with degradation below 0.5 %/kh.
What success looks like
Taken together, these should bring the levelised cost of hydrogen below 5 €/kg — at least 30 % below the current state of the art — with the stack technology at TRL 5 by November 2028.
Who is involved
DynElectro (Denmark) coordinates the project. The consortium also includes the Technical University of Denmark, Gdańsk University of Technology, Forschungszentrum Jülich, VERMES Microdispensing and COAT-IT — covering the chain from fundamental materials research through coating technology to industrial stack manufacturing.
CHARGE (CETP-2024-00202) is funded through the CETPartnership Joint Call 2024, with support from EUDP (Denmark), NCBR (Poland) and PtJ on behalf of BMWK (Germany).