Horizon wants to power every home with fuel cells

This electric car from London uses Horizon's fuel cells.

We just love hearing stories of regional startups that’ve made it big internationally. Southeast Asian companies like Charles & Keith, Banyan Tree Holdings and 77th Street have held the limelight in recent years and are still going strong.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, a Singapore company dealing with ultra-light and low-cost energy storage solutions, is right up there with the best of them.

Making hydrogen fuel cells, which are essentially long lasting power generators that generate electricity from gas, has been a global challenge for decades now and this was where Horizon decided to step in and make fuel cell their main focus.

That was in 2004. Eight years on, they are now the world’s largest producers of micro-fuel cells in consumer and industrial applications. It has successfully brought a wide range of products out into the market, with sales spanning 65 countries in total.

We spoke to Taras Wankewycz, Executive Director and one of the co-founders of this green technology company, on its success formula and what it takes to be on top of their game.

SGE: Tell us more about your company.

Taras: The company was started in 2003 in Singapore and under it we created several subsidiary start-ups that are market or application-focused, including another Singaporean-based company called Horizon Energy Systems (HES), which is focused on ultra-light aerospace and military applications technology.

Besides me, we have a few other founders and founding shareholders that includes members of the family that started Volkswagen and Porsche.

SGE: What gives your products that competitive edge over competitors?

Taras: We have two different value propositions over incumbent technologies (batteries or combustion engines), depending on which fuel or energy storage technologies we apply to our fuel cells.

The first value proposition offers much lighter-weight energy than the best possible batteries, as such we’re able to offer up to three to four times more energy for the same weight – an immediate impact in any aerospace application where batteries are used today.

For the second value proposition, we offer energy stored at a much lower cost as compared to batteries, or in some cases, even diesel. This is relevant especially in larger off-grid remote locations where choices for power supply are limited.

Our competitors are typically limited to a single technology or market, which in turn limits their ability to grow, and increases their business risk substantially. Having investigated the sector as corporate venture investors in the past, we were able to take a completely global and differentiated approach to the space…so we ended up choosing a very unique and diversified development path.