The public record, in one place
If a BaseBlue Power plant is proposed in your jurisdiction, these are the answers you will need: what it burns, what it emits, how loud it is, how much land it takes, how it gets permitted, and which federal credits the financing depends on.
What this page is
Disclosure, not a sales pitch.
We have no public-sector contract and we are not claiming one. What follows is the factual profile of the plant we build, written for the agencies, counties and communities that will have to evaluate it.
- Who we areBaseBlue Power is an HDF Energy project. HDF Energy designs, manufactures and integrates MW-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems.
- What we buildBehind-the-meter baseload power plants: containerised fuel cell blocks fed by hydrogen produced on site from natural gas, with pre-combustion carbon capture.
Air and combustion
What burns, and what does not.
This is the paragraph most worth reading twice, because it is the one most often quoted at half length.
The fuel cell blocks do not burn anything. They combine hydrogen with oxygen electrochemically and the only thing they emit is water. That statement is true of the fuel cell blocks and of nothing else on the site.
The plant as a whole runs on natural gas. An autothermal reformer converts that gas into hydrogen on site, and the carbon that comes with it is captured before combustion — concentrated at the reforming step rather than chased out of a flue gas stream afterwards.
We do not publish a capture rate or an annual captured tonnage on this site. The project material gives more than one value for both, and a number a regulator could rely on has to be a number we can stand behind. They will be published when they are confirmed.
For comparison
The default answer to the same demand is gas-to-power. Gas turbines operating at scale have triggered Clean Air Act litigation, organised community opposition and cancelled projects.
Siting criteria for our own projects put them outside non-attainment areas, in communities that already live with energy infrastructure and where the permitting path is understood.
Noise and land
The two things neighbours actually notice.
Setbacks and nuisance complaints are decided by decibels and acres, so both are stated here in the units they get measured in.
Noise
- Fuel cell block noise — office HVAC level60–65 dB
- Reformer noise levelBelow 90 dB
- Gas turbines at comparable scale, for referenceAbove 110 dB
Equipment footprint against the land parcel
- Reformer and carbon capture — equipment footprint2.5 acres
- Fuel cell blocks — equipment footprint6 acres
- Preferred development area~50 acres
The 2.5 and 6 acre figures are equipment footprint — the ground the plant stands on — and not site area. The land parcel around them, on the first project, is a preferred development area of roughly fifty acres.
The federal frame
Which credits the financing relies on.
A project of this size is financed with debt and tax equity, which means two federal credits sit inside the capital structure rather than beside it. Stating which ones, and at what rate, is the minimum a public body should expect.
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30%
Investment tax credit the fuel cell equipment is eligible for under Section 48E
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$85/tCO₂
Section 45Q credit the captured carbon is designed to qualify for
We do not publish a power price, a levelised cost or a return figure. None of those is public, and putting an indicative one on a website is how an indicative number becomes a quoted one.
Permitting and responsibility
Who you would actually be dealing with.
A project company holds the asset, and a named set of parties sits behind it. None of this is subcontracted to a counterparty you would meet for the first time at a hearing.
About BaseBlue Power- DeveloperHDF Energy and its advisors develop the project and provide the fuel cell engineering, from pre-feasibility through front-end engineering and design.
- PermittingPermitting for the hydrogen and power generation infrastructure is managed in-house, including procurement and supervision of the topographical, geotechnical and environmental studies needed to validate the design.
- LicensorsThe reformer and the carbon capture process are licensed technologies with named licensors, not in-house designs.
- ConstructionAn engineering, procurement and construction contractor is selected through a competitive tender run by the developer, and holds the construction contract with the project company.
- OperationsThe project company operates the plant under long-term service agreements covering the reformer and the fuel cell blocks.