Paul Rodden • Season: 2024 • Episode: 363
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Welcome to The Hydrogen Podcast!
Special Interview Series – Lynn Energy – In this insightful interview, Paul Rodden sits down with Tommy Lynn and Patrick Nelson of Lynn Energy to discuss their hands-on role in advancing hydrogen infrastructure. Lynn Energy’s extensive experience in designing and engineering control systems, safety protocols, and supply chain management makes them a standout partner in the hydrogen industry. From working with emerging hydrogen technologies to managing complex projects, they share how their background in oil and gas enables a seamless transition to hydrogen. Tune in to learn about the challenges and opportunities in building hydrogen facilities and how Lynn Energy is pushing for safe, efficient, and scalable solutions in this rapidly growing market.
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Paul Rodden
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Transcript:
Paul Rodden 0:00
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the hydrogen podcast. This is Paul Rodden today with me. I’m honored to have Tommy Lynn and Patrick Nelson with us from Lynn energy. Tommy Patrick, can you give us a little bit of a background on yourselves?
Patrick Nelson 0:15
Patrick Nelson, the Director of Business Development at Lynn energy services. We’re at humble Texas. In my career, I’ve always specialized in the electrical instrumentation and automation side of things, focusing primarily on hydrogen, renewable natural gas and oil and gas. And now I firmly believe that hydrogen has the potential to significantly transform the energy landscape, which is why I’m honored to be here and participate in this podcast. So thanks for having us Paul.
Tommy Lynn 0:45
Yeah, thanks again, Paul, we appreciate you taking time to include a small company like ours. I’ve been in the energy industry for 25 plus years, obviously, starting in oil and gas, I was pretty prominent in the 90s and switching into the renewables as we’ve grown as an energy industry. Background is in E and automation, and we’re part of a very large service company for many years, and left and started our own and really broken into the renewable market and hydrogen. And we’re just honored to be a part of it and see where it grows and see how we can help.
Paul Rodden 1:17
So happy to have you both here. So jumping off Lynn Energy has a strong reputation for engineering and designing control systems for hydrogen facilities. Can you tell us more about your work within the hydrogen industry?
Tommy Lynn 1:31
Yeah, I’ll take this one. Pat. So we’ve we’ve been a part of some some nice projects. Over the last few years, we’ve worked with a company called dimensional energy. They were a startup, and we were part of their very first facility in Tucson. We were hired to do their automation. We were brought in a little bit after the fact, gave us a rough IO lit, gave us an idea of what they were doing. And we kind of took a napkin and turned it into a working facility. These guys take electrolyzer for the green hydrogen Fisher tropsch reactor and a specialty reactor and turn it into syngas, so very cool process, and ported them from the automation front all the way to start up and commissioning on site in their Tucson facility. And that opened the door for their new facility, which we’re commissioning right now in Canada, at a semen factory. So they’re taking the CO two emissions from there, using their same technology with this Fisher trope reactor, their proprietary Raptor, and they’re making syn gas. So this one was really cool because we were brought in on the front end. We were the engineering support for the for the automation. So we helped them develop their IO list, all the controls and automation, and we were the power distribution guys. So we built a Conex and housed all the power distribution equipment. The caveat for this one is it’s in Canada, so it had to all be cu l rated. So we’re a 508 a shop, which rolls hand in hand with cul as well. So we brought that expertise, and we’re able to give them a solution. And we’re actually on site now, still helping them with startup. We went as far as their safety systems, their gas chromatograph we helped them design and build so it’s really opened the door. And this one we liked, because we were in on the front end. We were able to help them on the design aspect, give them a fit for purpose PLC, very similar to their Tucson operations. And we had to implement, they bought this, this stack from an old facility, and we had to implement that PLC, turn it into a real cabinet, tied it into our PLC. So it was a really fun project. That’s kind of where we add value being construction guys too. We know what is needed for the facility installed. So that was a really cool one. And last one we’re still working on was with eh, their very first facility, and we were brought in on the front end as for feed, for for budget, for them to get funding. So we helped them get budget for the PLC system and their E house. So we kind of did some rough sides on what we thought was the facility was going to look like. And obviously it’s grown exponentially. But this is 100 megawatt electrolyzer system. So we, we were awarded the the PLC. So we’ve, we’ve helped grow the PLC and design, and then they asked us to help on the fire and gas system. So we were just honored to be a part of it. We learned a lot. We took really the knowledge we’ve used in the oil and gas industry and just put it into the hydrogen market using, you know, our safety systems and whatnot. So we’ve been pretty blessed to be part of these big projects, and hopefully it keeps open the door for us to, you know, stick our nose in other places and help out Absolutely
Paul Rodden 4:28
and you know, but you were, you mentioned, safety really is a critical aspect of hydrogen infrastructure. Can you elaborate on your specialization in si l2, and three safety systems and how they enhance the safety of hydrogen facilities.
Patrick Nelson 4:45
Yeah, I’ll take that one, seal systems. They’re incredibly important when it comes to safety and dealing with gasses such as hydrogen, when comparing the hazardous analysis and layers of protection analysis procedure. Hydrogen ranks much higher in risk due to its explosive nature. This makes it vital to not only monitor and safely discharge it in a safe manner, but also to ensure that we have multiple cell fail safes in place, and this is where the si l system comes into place with a seal system, we’ve added extra layers of protection through items such as redundant transmitters and redundancies in our control systems to ensure that even in catastrophic failure situations, we mitigate the risks to people and to the equipment. This is done through multiple layers of protection at all levels the infrastructure, starting at monitoring devices and moving through the redundancy of our physical control system and redundancy built into the code and rigorously tested to obtain high levels of ratings. Essentially, there’s no single point of failure at this point.
Paul Rodden 6:04
So your team designs and fabricates the UL 508 a panels. And Tommy, you mentioned the 508 earlier. How do these panels contribute to the overall efficiency and safety of hydrogen projects?
Patrick Nelson 6:18
Yeah, the UL ratings are becoming increasingly sought after in our line of work, UL takes the best of the NEC, which is the National Electric Code, the IEE, which is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the IEC, which is the International electronic or electro technical commission, and other regulatory bodies, and combines them into one of the most thorough rating systems. We maintain personnel that are versed and certified in this rating system. These people have the knowledge and the background experience to build panels that are electrically safe, utilizing UL recognized and UL certified components. This moves beyond the typical electrical safe work practices utilize when building these traditional control panels. So by using the UL parts and these methods, we can ensure our end user is getting not only a panel that’s wired correctly, but also a panel in which the internal components have been engineered and tested to maintain the integrity of the system as a whole.
Paul Rodden 7:29
Switching gears a little bit. Let’s talk about your comprehensive engineering capabilities. Can you describe the feed and detailed electrical engineering design work you perform on hydrogen facilities.
Tommy Lynn 7:42
Yeah, Pat, let me, I’ll take this one, yeah, like we talked about before. I mean, that’s, that’s really the value we bring. We don’t like to sell ourselves as an engineering firm by any means, because some of my largest customers are, but we are a bunch of electrical engineers, so we’ve, we’ve been brought in front in on the automation design for one, you know, we understand process, and we can help them get the design set up power distribution, something we’re really strong in, and these facilities pull a lot of power, both substation and on site, so we’ve been able to get get in on the front end and really help them mitigate the lead times. I mean, we have really strong supply chain relationships, so that value that we bring from the front end, usually opens the door for us to get a portion of the project and then take it all the way to, you know, start the commissioning, which I have text that can go into any field and help and support. So just knowing the process of a facility and understanding, really, the energy industry as a whole, it opens the door for us, because, you know, our lead engineer has been doing this a very long time, so there’s nothing we can’t throw at him that he doesn’t know. It really propels us and adds that extra value within the company. You know, we are a turnkey solution for them, and that’s, that’s how it’s really opened the door for us in the hydrogen they don’t have to have multiple vendors on site to support and most of these companies as much money as invested in their small group, and they need the help. And we love to help, because we’ve seen massive facilities fall short and fall funding. So I think that’s on the front end for us, on the funding side, helping them budget all the way to help them design fit for purpose, for the lifetime of the facility. Sometimes you don’t have to build a Mercedes. You know, a Toyota will work perfectly fine and outlast that nice Mercedes with the bells and whistles and that. That’s just from years from from our engineering team knowing what’s what’s needed, that’s where we best fit in, from the feed all the way through to start conditioning.
Paul Rodden 9:36
Power distribution, control systems and safety systems, they’re all crucial elements. How do you integrate these systems to ensure seamless operation and compliance with standards like the NFPA 72?
Tommy Lynn 9:50
So the NFPA 72 has been the fire the fire systems that we’ve done have been very intricate, mainly coming from offshore oil and gas where we started. So we under. Stand the crucial need for NFPA 72 compliance, from the front end engineering all the way through to the instrument selection, how all the calibrators or the the fire transmitters, fire eyes, everything is mounted, depending on how heavy the gas is and whatnot. So we’ve helped out from the front end do the front end design to the installation details, as well as taking it to the commissioning aspect, so that that really just relates to fire and gas. As far as power distribution and control systems, there’s massive power distribution companies like ABB, any Schneider, all those big guys, but a lot of these facilities that we’ve seen have a have a life expectancy, where they got to get this facility up and running at x time, and you can’t wait 70 plus weeks for the big guys. So we know a lot of other companies that aren’t the mainstream companies that we’ve relied on in supply chain to help get low voltage, medium voltage switch gear in a reasonable time frame. The big guys we have to work with when they’re spec. If we don’t, we’ve got really strong relationships and can get a quick turnaround. So that’s just industry knowledge that, you know, we’ve developed, really from trial and error of working with the big guys and getting the call a week out before, you know, an MCC supposed to ship, saying, hey, sorry, we’re missing a resistor, and it’s another 12 weeks before we can ship. Usually, that doesn’t work, and there’s LDS involved sometimes. So yeah, I think that’s that’s the big thing. Is the supply chain support and just the knowledge of knowing what works and what doesn’t work.
Paul Rodden 11:29
And then that brings us to communication systems like SCADA and historians. They’re vital for monitoring and data collection. How does Lynn Energy leverage these technologies to enhance hydrogen facility operations?
Patrick Nelson 11:42
Yeah, hydrogen facilities encompass many different techniques and practices to obtain and utilize the hydrogen. So very often, system such as an electrolyzer, is utilized. It pumps high voltage into a system separating the hydrogen from a purified or treated water source. While this brings its own challenges using the high voltage systems, it gets more advanced by taking this hydrogen and producing synthetic fuels, these often begin to incorporate reactors with catalysts and very sensitive process. So SCADA allows us to provide real time information to the operators with state of the art visual visualization, making the system not only visually pleasing and easy to operate, but also it’s very intuitive as well. These systems provide configurable alarms and process controls. They have begun to incorporate AI systems and feedback so operators can improve on their last systems to maximize the outputs and minimize the costs. The historians are often integrated with the SCADA systems, allowing data scientists to analyze batches and running processes and further making improvements based on the models that can be built and deployed so often this this is through test labs, pilot plants that will further make hydrogen facilities this more efficient and in the ever growing power industry, this makes hydrogen really a unique product, but it is essential to have these modern SCADA and historian systems deploy.
Patrick Nelson 13:29
Switching gears a little bit again, and let’s talk about your industry experience and supply chain management. Your management team boasts over 50 years of global industrial experience. How does this extensive experience benefit your clients, particularly in the hydrogen sector?
Tommy Lynn 13:46
Yeah. I mean, I think, like, like we talked about before, Paul, you know, a hydrogen facility is not much different some of the other facilities we’ve developed and worked with. So understanding the process that our engineers and our tech really opened the door for us to, you know, pull from past experiences on when it comes to supply chain or retrofitting. Think that’s really opened our eyes more of how we can help on the front end. And, you know, that’s why Pat’s kind of pushing out into the hydrogen more, just because our experience, even though, you know, primarily it was oil and gas and for the most part of it, but for the last 10 plus years, we’ve been we’ve been in the renewables, and there’s not much, not much we can’t leverage from our past lives into to the hydrogen market, especially when it comes to supply chain and this massive power distribution that it has. So there’s a lot of front end planning that I don’t think some of the new players take into account. When they want a facility that, you know is massive, 100 megawatt plus, and they want it up and running in two years. But your lead time on some of this equipment is is three plus years out. So any way we can help cut that down so they can meet their financial, financial means and their further funding to develop more facilities, which we’re seeing that some of these guys are starting to start on facilities two. Three when they’re still trying to get one up and running. So we just want to help them out in any way. And we just utilize past experiences and obviously Supply Chain Management, which we worked heavily in in our past life. You know, a lot of times big engineering firms will over engineer everything they do, and they bring it to us to go price out and said, Okay, well, this a, this doesn’t exist. And B, if we segmented this motor control center, we can cut lead times. If we pulled this drive out of here, we can do this separately. If we build a standalone unit, there’s just certain things that we can do, or certain ways we can cut costs and cut lead time just from pulling projects we’ve worked on. Just like I said, I mean, a hydrogen facility. It has more power than you know, your compressor station or RNG facility, but the process understanding how it works is really where we come in and we help out.
Paul Rodden 15:49
It sounds like that, really reducing cost, lead, time, things like that also helps reduce project risk, absolutely and so consulting on projects, from concept execution. It’s not a small feat. Can you share a case study or an example of how line energy has successfully supported hydrogen projects from start to finish?
Tommy Lynn 16:11
Yeah, I think, I think the big one is the dimensional project we’ve worked with in Canada. Because he was like, here’s a napkin of what we want to do. How do we get there? So originally, they bought this tower with all their process equipment, and it’s literally a it’s a tower, and had a design and a drawing, and this is what they wanted to do. And how can we get there? So we sat down with them. We realized that a lot of this stuff was not in, you know, classified correctly. Some equipment was in, you know, a class one did two area that couldn’t be they didn’t want to reuse the PLC, but they didn’t want to rerun all the cables. So we turned the PLC into a Rio panel and tied it into our PLC. We figured out how to work power distribution system into it, as well as a communications because there was three facilities here. There was a cement facility and there’s a second facility, so we had a seamlessly have all of our fire and gas systems tie into theirs to tell them, hey, there’s a fire at this facility. You don’t need to shut down everything, but this is what’s going on, as well as the controls that went across the board. So that was a really cool project that we were brought into the front end, and we’ve been able to take it all the way to the commissioning aspect, which we’re working in now. So hopefully we get more out of those opportunities, because that’s the value that we bring to the table. So that’s probably the big one. We’ve done other ones, especially with the eh, but this one has eh hasn’t been commissioned yet. This dimensional one whiz is going through commissioning now, and should be started up pretty soon.
Paul Rodden 17:40
Wedid talk about supply chain earlier, a little bit and effective supply chain management really is crucial for meeting project deadlines. How does lend energy manage the supply chain to ensure timely delivery of critical components like motor control centers and switch gear?
Patrick Nelson 17:55
Yeah, we have, like Tom alluded to. We have strong, long, lasting relationships with our energy industrial partners, our connections with the top distributors, our fabrication teams. It helps us tackle problems together. All aim to at delivering a great product on time, good communication, just with anything. It’s key for us. We work really well as a team, knowing the deadlines matter, we understand the engineering can change after a bid process, or even after a PO is made, can affect the delivery times. So our team has a solid background in electrical engineering, so it allows us to make custom adjustments once the products arrive at our facility, we also like to think outside the box. Tom alluded to this as well. So we had an end user that needed a 6000 amp package, 480 volt the lead time was over two years, and instead, we suggested providing three, 2000 amp 480 volt packages that we could deliver in just 25 weeks. So this saved the customer over 79 weeks. And you know, time is valuable. So in short, we just, we’re not only a supplier of motor control switch gear, electrical buildings, panels and skids. You know, we’re partners, and we’re dedicated to finding smart and efficient solutions for our customers.
Paul Rodden 19:21
Change it up a little bit and talk about hydrogen project experience specifically. Lynn energy is currently supporting a seven megawatt hydrogen facility project. Can you provide more details about your role in this project and the impact it’s expected to have?
Tommy Lynn 19:37
Yeah. So we were this one. We were brought on early to start with the budget, right? How? How much does this cost? So we helped them budget the controls and the power distribution in the MCC we were, we were awarded the PLC design and fabrication of the main master control panel and all the Rio panels. So we’ve been working on that. And this was a seal to capable system. The only way it could go to a full seal to system if it was completely redundant with the instrumentation in the field. And that’s that was for the customer to decide how they wanted to do it, but they wanted a CO two capable PLC system as well as that, we were the NFPA 72 fire detection system supplier. We expect all the fire detection equipment, as well as where it needed to be mounted, how it needed to be mounted and installed. That was a big one. It’s a big impact. Where it’s going to be said, it’s going to produce 50 tons a day, so it’s pretty massive, and this one has the capability to grow. That’s their plan. They were trying to do more of a modular system, and that’s how we were trying to help out. So that was a pretty cool one to be a part of.
Paul Rodden 20:41
Yeah, collaboration with clients, their engineering firms, is key to defining equipment requirements. How do you approach these collaborations to ensure the success of these hydrogen projects?
Patrick Nelson 20:53
Yeah, we work with engineering solutions of all kinds, whether it’s simple all the way to complex. Our goal is to optimize what we have available and make it work well for our clients. We partner and work with many engineering firms to tackle challenges and develop very specific solutions. Believe in asking the right questions to help guide our clients through this process. We often find ways to save on cost, especially in the field, installation and with our supply chain management, we treat these engineering firms with the same care as we would our clients, open communication and understanding their needs, and that’s really our key approach. Our main focus is to create value with our customers. So by leveraging our network and expertise, we provide efficient solutions and make booth collaborations amongst all parties so so through asking the right questions and fostering existing and newer relationships, we have been consistently delivering results that meet or exceed their wants and their needs.
Paul Rodden 21:59
Your team has provided detailed engineering control and safety systems and E house solutions for pilot facilities. How does your technical expertise set you apart in the hydrogen market?
Tommy Lynn 22:11
I think that the value we bring is we’re also ime construction guys too, so we understand what it needs to be and how it needs to be installed in the field. So we bring that in on the front end. A lot of times it’s engineered to a point where we know it’s not going to work from a construction standpoint. So I think that’s being a one stop shop that we can take something from cradle to grave really provides our customer a lot of advantages, because we’ve seen both sides, from the engineering side to the design side, to the startup, and then all the way to the commissioning and a running facility at the end of the day. That’s what these guys want. So I think that is the value that we bring. Because we’re always thinking from a construction standpoint. A lot of times when we talk to them, and just like Pat was talking about, I mean, we think about lead times because we know that they tell us on the front end on an RFP package is, this is the start update, right? And you you’re trying to order some gear, or it’s not going to work. It’s, it’s, it’s not going to meet those deadlines, or it’s not feasible to do the install the way you thought it, which we see a lot too, setting gear in a building where you can’t hit the bin radius of the massive cable coming in. It’s just little things like that that my team really knows from past experience, from physical installation, that helps us when they’re doing the design aspect of it. Because once it gets to site, if you set it some gear in a building, and you realize you can’t make that bin radius of this massive cable coming in, or your gland plates too small, there’s just a lot of things that you know, we we think about when we’re helping on the front end, and I think that that really sets us apart. And, you know, it’s just like Pat alluded to as well. It’s we care. We’re a service company. We have the mentality that we want to grasp a customer and want to keep a customer so being transparent and helping them out on the front end, really, you know, endears ourselves to them.
Paul Rodden 23:59
One last question is, we’re finishing up something I always like to finish up and ask, looking ahead, what do you envision for the future of hydrogen infrastructure, and how do you see wind energy contributing to this future? And what advancements or trends do you think will shape the industry in the next decade?
Patrick Nelson 24:19
I’ll go first on this one, I see the hydrogen industry set for just huge expansion, driven by the hydrogen, the green hydrogen production, decarbonization efforts and just increased investments just all over the world. I mean, you have key projects like the the white dunes initiative in Morocco, and that highlights a focus on large scale green hydrogen projects and production and so at lent energy, I believe we can leverage our expertise and automation and process controls to optimize hydrogen production facilities, our capabilities in electrical design and construction. Can support and then deliver and development of these hydrogen infrastructures, while our field services and expertise will assist on the installation and the maintenance of these facilities as well. I see a trend towards gigawatt scale hydrogen production facilities with ongoing efforts to lower the cost of green hydrogen through technology, the industry is also seeing closer ties between hydrogen production and renewable energy sector sources, as well as the development of better storage technologies and the transportation infrastructure as well evolving policies will encourage hydrogen adoption, and I anticipate and banded use of hydrogen and transportation, I mean residential, commercial heating, different things like that. But overall, I feel that land energy is well positioned to contribute to the evolving hydrogen landscape as it grows into a vital component of the sustainable energy future.
Tommy Lynn 26:06
Yeah, I’ll add to that a little bit. I mean, my view on this is, I see it going into mainstream distribution once transportation is handled, right? We’ve talked about this Paul in the past. I think that’s, that’s the one hold up, and once that is surpassed, which I think is soon you’re going to see these projects taken off, and I think they’re going to turn to more modular style projects, because they can internalize a lot of these facilities, similar to the cryo facilities we’ve seen in the past. And I think once that’s done, your cost is driven down. And these, these, these projects, are more feasible, and they’re going to be natural bolt ons to your major players out in the industry, especially in the RNG world, and massive natural gas producers that can’t flare anymore, because you can take that extra flare, you can put it into a Gen set, and you can start to power these facilities, as long as you have, obviously, water and electrolyzer you can, you can produce hydrogen. And I see that growth there. We have people reaching out to us, asking that too, because we’re big players in the RNG market, if they’re willing to sell any gas to them as a byproduct form. So I really think that’s where the industry is going to go. And I really think we bring a lot of value to that and and we hope we can help on some modular facilities. That’s what that would be really exciting, because we do a lot of process equipment too. So I think that you modulize These systems, you’re controlling your costs. And obviously, just like Pat said, once they can start to trim costs down, and they have it down to, you know, a better science of this facility, this size facility costs this much money, funding comes a lot faster. And, you know, we we’re taking it to the next, next generation of energy, right?
Paul Rodden 27:40
Great. Tommy and Patrick, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your expertise today. It’s so refreshing to talk with a company that has actually had had boots on the ground for hydrogen project development and getting your insights into what had you’ve actually had to do to get those projects off the ground. It’s really inspiring, and we look forward to seeing how Len energy continues to lead the way in advancing the hydrogen economy. Now, if any of our listeners want to know more information on the services you provide, where can they go?
Tommy Lynn 28:13
You can come to our website, www.Lynnenergy.com, little back story that we we didn’t talk about we were going through a rebrand recently. We were we were Inception with Falcon energy in 2018 and through our growth, we decided to go back to our legacy and how we got here, and that’s where the lynn energy came from. No change other than name. But if anybody wants to reach out, we’d love to help you guys.
Paul Rodden 28:39
Excellent. Thank you both again for your time today.
Tommy Lynn 28:42
Thanks, Paul.
Patrick Nelson 28:42
Thank you, Paul.
Paul Rodden 28:43
Hey, this is Paul. I hope you liked this podcast. If you did and want to hear more, I’d appreciate it if you would either subscribe to this channel on YouTube or connect with your favorite platform through my website at www.thehydrogen podcast.com, thanks for listening. I very much appreciate it. Have a great day.
