Indian hydrogen firm uses Schneider/Microsoft AI electrolyser

Energy firm Schneider Electric has announced a milestone in green hydrogen production, in collaboration with Microsoft Azure, demonstrating how AI‑powered automation at scale can drive efficiency, scalability, and cost reduction. In collaboration with h2e POWER, an Indian green hydrogen pioneer, the two companies have deployed India’s first fully autonomous solid oxide electrolyser system, delivering up to 10% reduction in the levelised cost of hydrogen, equivalent to around EUR500,000 per year for a typical 10 MW plant.

At the heart of this collaboration is a conviction that industrial automation is overdue for the same open, software-driven transformation that reshaped enterprise IT. Today, most factories and energy plants still run on hardware-locked control systems that are expensive to update, slow to adapt and difficult to extend with Industrial AI. Schneider Electric says it is building the technology that showcases a better alternative exists.

In collaboration with h2e POWER, the two companies have deployed India’s first fully autonomous solid oxide electrolyser system, empowering operators to shift their focus from routine monitoring to more strategic, high-impact work. The system has surpassed 6,000 hours of stable operation in part and full-load conditions and has demonstrated just-in-time predictive maintenance and promise in cutting electricity consumption by up to 10%, in a process where electricity accounts for more than 70% of total hydrogen production cost.

The collaboration with Microsoft combines Schneider Electric’s role as an energy technology partner and pioneer of open, software‑defined automation with Microsoft Azure cloud, AI, and edge infrastructure.

Central to this is the Industrial Copilot, which extends intelligence to the edge using Microsoft Azure’s cloud and AI services approach for local inference and reinforcement. It automates the engineering tasks that slow modernisation most: writing control logic, configuring systems, and navigating documentation. Engineering teams using it report up to 50% time savings, with production line changes that once took weeks now completed in hours.

It also uses Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Automation Expert, which it claims is the world’s first open, software-defined automation platform. By separating software from hardware, it lets customers run and reuse their automation applications across different equipment, vendors, and generations of infrastructure. Microsoft Azure provides the secure cloud and edge backbone that connects it all, from individual sensors to enterprise dashboards.

Green hydrogen is central to global decarbonisation plans; however, producing it cheaply and reliably at scale remains a challenge. Solid oxide electrolysers (SOECs) offer the highest efficiency of any hydrogen production technology, but their operating conditions are so demanding that it has been difficult to maintain equitable net energy consumption and operate them autonomously.

h2e POWER, based in Pune with operations in India, Germany and the US, had this challenge. Its SOEC system is technically superior, but limited real-time visibility and the absence of open, scalable automation were pushing operating costs well above design targets.

Working with Schneider Electric, the firm deployed a new AI-powered control solution on h2e POWER’s 20 kW SOEC system. The solution continuously monitors and adjusts the electrolyser in real time, managing thermal balance, hydrogen flow, energy inputs, and safety and equipment health, remotely.

Thus, energy efficiency improved, stack wear was significantly reduced, and the levelised cost of hydrogen, the industry’s key economic metric, fell by up to 10%, equivalent to around EUR500,000 per year for a typical 10 MW plant.