When WD HydroTech was founded in 2021, the goal was not simply to build another electrolyser. The founders believed there was a bigger question worth asking:
Could green hydrogen itself be produced in a more sustainable way?
At the time, hydrogen was attracting unprecedented attention as a key component of the global energy transition. Governments were setting ambitious targets, investment was increasing rapidly, and technologies that had spent decades in development were beginning to reach commercial scale.
Yet despite this momentum, the founders believed there was still significant room for innovation. Not because hydrogen was the wrong answer, but because some of the technologies being used to produce it could still be improved.
By the time WD HydroTech was established, founders Keith Downes and Dr Nigel Williamson had already spent decades working in hydrogen and energy technologies. The pair had previously worked together to establish Blue Sphere Hydrogen, gaining extensive experience in hydrogen production, deployment and commercialisation. Nigel had also spent many years developing hydrogen technologies, including work on proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers at ITM Power.
This experience provided valuable insight into how electrolyser systems are designed, manufactured and operated in real-world applications. The founders recognised the important role existing technologies have played in advancing the hydrogen sector. However, firsthand experience also highlighted challenges around material usage, component lifetimes, supply chain resilience and long-term sustainability.
As hydrogen moved towards wider adoption, they began asking a simple question:
Could the next generation of electrolysers be designed differently?
Rather than accepting established approaches as the final destination, they saw an opportunity to explore alternative architectures that could simplify manufacturing, reduce reliance on constrained materials and ultimately lower the cost of producing green hydrogen.
The objective was never innovation for innovation's sake.
The objective was to make green hydrogen more practical, more sustainable and more accessible.
The founders' motivation was rooted in something bigger than engineering. Like many people working in clean energy, they were thinking about the long-term future. They shared a belief that technological innovation should help create a better world for future generations while supporting economic prosperity today. For them, sustainability was never simply about reducing emissions. It also meant considering how technologies are manufactured, the materials they rely upon, the resilience of their supply chains and their impact throughout their entire lifecycle.
The challenge became clear:
How do we make green hydrogen not only environmentally beneficial in operation, but genuinely sustainable from an economic and industrial perspective as well?
That question became the foundation upon which WD HydroTech was built.
Like many engineering ventures, WD HydroTech began far from corporate boardrooms and industrial facilities. The earliest development work took place in Nigel's garage. Initial experiments were conducted using simple bench-scale test rigs assembled from readily available plumbing components. The goal was not to build a product, but to prove whether the underlying principles could work in practice. Those early years required patience, persistence and belief. The company was largely self-funded, with the founders investing significant personal time and resources while continuing to refine the technology.
One of the first major technical challenges involved understanding and controlling gas bubble behaviour within the electrolyser system. Solving challenges like these required countless hours of experimentation, analysis and iteration. Yet the team never viewed obstacles as evidence the technology would fail. Research and development is fundamentally about solving problems. Every challenge overcome provides a pathway to the next stage of development. The founders remained confident in the core principles and continued to build towards their vision.
A major breakthrough came when WD HydroTech secured a highly competitive Innovate UK Smart Grant. For the team, this represented far more than funding. It provided independent validation of both the technology and the company's vision for the future of hydrogen production. The award enabled WD HydroTech to establish dedicated facilities at the Advanced Manufacturing Park Technology Centre in South Yorkshire and accelerate development towards commercial demonstration. It also marked the transition from a self-funded innovation project to a full-time technology company.
The grant framework provided clear milestones, helping the team transform years of research into a structured development programme capable of delivering tangible results. Around the same time, the company began attracting support from early believers who shared its vision. Among them was Peak Oil Products, whose investment reflected confidence in both the technology and the growing role hydrogen could play within future industrial energy systems.
While the company's technical vision has remained remarkably consistent, the market around it has evolved significantly. When WD HydroTech was founded, conversations were largely dominated by net zero targets and carbon reduction.
Today, those same conversations increasingly focus on energy resilience, energy security and domestic supply chains. Rather than changing the company's direction, this shift reinforced what the founders had already begun to recognise. Sustainability and energy security are not competing priorities. They are closely connected.
Technologies that support local production, strengthen domestic supply chains and enable distributed energy generation can contribute to both environmental and economic resilience. As the team engaged with customers, utilities, industrial users and infrastructure partners, it became increasingly clear that future hydrogen deployment would require practical, scalable solutions that could operate effectively in real-world environments. This insight helped shape the company's growing focus on modular, distributed hydrogen systems capable of serving applications where flexibility, resilience and deployment speed are critical.
As development progressed, the team encountered another challenge. Hydrogen production is only part of the value chain. Many applications also require reliable and cost-effective hydrogen compression, yet suitable solutions can often be expensive, complex or subject to long lead times. Experiencing these challenges first-hand led the company to explore a second area of innovation.
Applying the same engineering philosophy that shaped the electrolyser programme, WD HydroTech began developing its own hydrogen compression technology aimed at improving efficiency, practicality and accessibility. Today, the company is developing both hydrogen generation and hydrogen compression technologies, creating a broader platform designed to support the deployment of sustainable hydrogen infrastructure.
More than four years after its founding, the principles that inspired WD HydroTech remain unchanged. The company continues to challenge assumptions. It continues to look for opportunities to improve existing technologies. And it continues to believe that innovation should deliver benefits that extend beyond technical performance alone.
Since those first experiments in a garage workshop, WD HydroTech has progressed from concept development to full demonstrator systems undergoing testing and validation. The journey has required determination, collaboration and a willingness to tackle difficult engineering challenges. Yet the original ambition remains as relevant today as it was in 2021:
To help create a future energy system that is more sustainable, more resilient and more accessible for generations to come.
As hydrogen moves from promise to deployment, WD HydroTech intends to remain focused on the same question that inspired its creation:
How can we make green hydrogen work better for everyone?
