Pillar 5 of 5 · kills: Merchant demand risk
Guaranteed captive demand. A factory that eats 30% of the output.
Every site pairs the electrolyser with an unrelated, high-heat manufacturing line that consumes at least 30% of production internally at steady state.
Modelled saving
₹15–20/kg
₹20–30/kg risk premium → ₹5–10/kg
2 · The mechanism
The single largest lender objection to a hydrogen plant is not the technology. It is the question of who buys the gas. We answer it inside the fence. At Punjab, a wheat-husk tableware line producing 50,000 units a month runs processing, moulding, packaging and QC on a 100 kW fuel cell, eighteen hours a day. At Odisha, a bamboo-salt line runs hydrogen-fired nine-cycle roasting at 800–1000 °C, plus process heat for drying and crystallisation, on an 80 kW fuel cell, 24 hours six days a week.
Why high-heat traditional production specifically. Both processes need sustained heat, so they can absorb hydrogen as fuel rather than only as electricity. Neither is correlated with the hydrogen market, so a soft merchant price does not soften internal demand. And both carry a genuine zero-emission production story into a premium consumer category, which is a second revenue line rather than a cost centre.
The financing consequence is the point. Merchant demand risk becomes a fixed internal load. An internal transfer price of ₹200–250/kg acts as a floor beneath market pricing of ₹280–355/kg. Modelled DSCR moves from 1.04 in Year 1 to an average of 4.2 across Years 2–6. Captive share builds from 7–8% in Year 1 to 25–35% by Years 4–5 as the factory lines scale.
3 · The components
Everything on this page is bought, not invented.
| What is used | Who makes it | Maturity |
|---|---|---|
| Wheat-husk tableware line, 50,000 units/month | Indian moulding OEM | Commercial |
| Hydrogen-fired roasting kiln, 800–1000 °C | Kiln fabricator, hydrogen burner retrofit | Burners commercial; kiln to be built |
| 100 kW / 80 kW fuel cells | As on storage page | Commercial |
| Internal transfer-pricing agreement | GreenFuel | Structured |
Supplier names given by class. Partners are in discussion unless a written agreement exists; none is implied as an endorsement.
4 · The numbers
₹15–20/kg
Basis. Market risk premium of ₹20–30/kg priced into conventional project finance against ₹5–10/kg with a 30% captive floor.
Sensitivity. The whole model holds under 20% lower merchant volume and 10% higher costs; the captive floor is what keeps DSCR above 1 in that case.
- 30%of outputplan
- steady-state internal consumption
- 50,000units/monthplan
- wheat-husk tableware
- 20 → 90t/monthplan
- bamboo salt
- 800–1000 °C9-cycle roastingplan
- 9-cycle roasting
- ₹200–250/kgmodelled
- internal floor
- 1.04 → 4.2DSCRmodelled
- Year 1 → average Years 2–6
5 · What we still need to prove
- 01Hydrogen-fired nine-cycle roasting has not been run at production scale by us; the kiln is an MVP deliverable.
- 02Consumer demand for both product lines is market-researched, not order-backed.