Indian green hydrogen company h2e POWER has run a high-temperature solid oxide electrolysis system autonomously for more than 6,000 hours on Schneider Electric's automation platform with Microsoft Azure AI, Schneider said in a press release at Hannover Messe in April 2026. Schneider says the deployment cuts the levelized cost of hydrogen by up to 10%, which it equates to around €500,000 a year for a typical 10 MW plant; the release gives no figures for h2e POWER's own unit.
Solid oxide electrolysis runs at high temperature and is one of the most demanding environments for industrial control, so keeping it stable without constant human intervention is a key requirement for producing green hydrogen economically.
The deployment runs on Schneider's EcoStruxure Automation Expert, an open, software-defined automation platform that runs the same logic across on-premises, edge and hybrid environments, with Microsoft Azure cloud and AI services orchestrating, analyzing and optimizing the process. In the wider Schneider and Microsoft platform, specialized AI agents coordinated by an orchestrator automate routine design decisions and validate automation logic in simulation before it is deployed, and Schneider's industrial copilot on Azure AI assists engineers with control configuration and documentation; Schneider reports engineering time savings of up to 50% across its customers. The release does not detail which AI models control the electrolyser.
Schneider and Microsoft presented the platform at Hannover Messe 2026 as part of their joint work on agentic, software-defined manufacturing spanning design, engineering, commissioning and operations.
Details
- City
- Pune
- Organization
- h2e POWER
- Continent
- Asia
- Country
- India
- Category
- Electrical Equipment