Transitioning from reactive to proactive service

Plug Power is an American company that produces Electrolyzers, based on PEM-technology (proton exchange membrane), that split water to make hydrogen and oxygen. It's also the largest consumer of liquid hydrogen in the United States.

Plug Power is building an end-to-end green hydrogen ecosystem, from production, storage and delivery to utilisation, to help its customers achieve their sustainability goals and decarbonise the economy.

Plug Power is committed to maximising the availability of their systems. It wants to do this by moving from a reactive to proactive service model resulting in shorter response times and minimal downtime. "We want to directly engage with customers in case of unplanned downtime and perform maintenance and replacement of equipment in a more predictive fashion. That way you can really add value to your customer," says Laurens Terraneo, Product Specialist ELX at Plug Power.

To achieve this, Plug Power collects operational and performance data to gain insight into KPIs such as response times, number of incidents resolved, maintenance hours and costs of unscheduled maintenance. They also want insight into customer system performance such as uptime, system efficiency, production efficiency and hydrogen purity, information that is also valuable to customers.

With this data, Plug Power aims to develop a service model that unburdens customers by proactively engaging them with valuable insights and recommendations, backed by a 24/7 tech support service that remotely monitors systems and provides a continuous feedback loop for product improvement.

Plug Power integrates IXON routers into Electrolyzers delivered to its customers around the globe. The IXON portal is used, under the name ELX, for data logging and visualisation.

"With IXON we kill two birds with one stone," says Terraneo. "Without any coding experience, we can visualise data. In addition, it offers a lot of added value because it's so easy to integrate with other tools, so we have the flexibility to set it up how we see fit."

Service architecture built around IXON

The ELX portal plays a critical role in Plug Power's 24/7 tech support strategy. It allows the company to guarantee a 96% uptime of its systems, and enables rapid troubleshooting and knowledge sharing through the Service Logbook and a ticketing system.

"With the ELX portal, we configure alarms that automatically generate tickets when systems are down. This allows us to analyse the causes and it contributes to the knowledge base we want to build," says Duncan Jansen, Product Manager Data at Plug Power.

Knowledge base for faster response time

This service knowledge base centralises critical information and reduces Plug Power's response time. It provides quick access to historical data and solutions, allowing employees to respond more quickly to new incidents. By centralizing this expertise, product experts are relieved; they can focus on urgent tasks, making the organisation more flexible and scalable. In addition, the knowledge base serves as the basis for algorithms for future predictive maintenance.

Laurens says: "We have a small team focused on the front end development in the portal. One of them writes software for custom components and features with support from IXON's Customer Success Manager, as he knows all the ins and outs of how that's set up technically. That works out really well and is significantly accelerating our development."

Plug Power has already made some major improvements using its ELX portal:

Faster commissioning - Thanks to IXON, system installation and commissioning time has been greatly reduced by several months. This results in faster project delivery and significantly reduces labour costs and time.

Improved diagnostics - IXON's advanced diagnostic capabilities can quickly identify upsets or performance deviations. This has led to a tenfold increase in troubleshooting times, and increased operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Preventive problem solving - Laurens says: "By performing root cause analysis, we can identify and address safety-critical situations, such as hazardous gas compositions, early on. Without IXON's data acquisition and visualisation capabilities, there is no way we would have resolved certain issues. This not only improves the safety of the systems, but also leads to serious improvements in product design."