HydrogenE3 wins the Excellence Team Award in the 2024 Ørsted Sustainable Innovation Accelerator (沃旭能源永續創新加速器競賽).

We are proud to announce that HydrogenE3, a student team led by Associate Professor I-Yun Lisa Hsieh, won the Excellence Team Award (學生組卓越獎) at the inaugural Ørsted Sustainable Innovation Accelerator (沃旭永續創新加速器). The winners were unveiled in October 2024 at Energy Taiwan (台灣國際智慧能源週), with HydrogenE3 prevailing among nearly 70 proposals submitted to the competition's first edition and taking home the student-division prize of NT$300,000.

The Winning Proposal

The team's entry, "HydrogenE3: Innovative Wind-to-Green-Hydrogen Cost Analysis System" (創新風電綠氫成本智慧分析系統), tackles a question at the heart of Taiwan's energy transition: what does it actually cost to turn offshore wind into green hydrogen? The system combines:

• Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) modeling to rigorously quantify production costs across wind-to-hydrogen pathways;
• Generative AI to make the analysis accessible through intelligent, conversational decision support;
• An interactive visualization platform that lets stakeholders explore scenarios and assumptions in real time.

The team brought together doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, and the jury commended the proposal's innovative concept.

A Rigorous Nine-Month Journey

Co-organized by Ørsted (沃旭能源) and the Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC, 金屬工業研究發展中心), the accelerator evolved from Ørsted's long-running green-energy scholarship into a team-based innovation program open to both industry and student divisions. Entries went through nine months of screening, mentoring by industry experts, and a final pitch round. Ørsted Taiwan Chairman Christy Wang (汪欣潔) praised the enthusiastic response to the first-ever accelerator, noting that it showcased the boundless potential of Taiwan's talent in advancing offshore-wind sustainability, and pledged corporate and public-sector support to help winning teams bring their proposals into practice.

We would especially like to recognize Jason (Chon Man) Tam, who served as a core member for project management and AI development in building the intelligent decision-making platform.

The Sustainable Innovation Accelerator award ceremony at Energy Taiwan 2024. Photos courtesy of Ørsted (圖／沃旭能源提供).

From Competition to Collaboration

The award proved to be a beginning rather than an end. Building on the accelerator, the E3 Center and MIRDC launched a joint technical project on wind power forecasting for green hydrogen — work that was later featured in Focus News and showcased at the NTU × MIRDC joint seminar on wind, hydrogen, and e-fuels.

Read more: Ørsted's official announcement and media coverage on NOWnews (both in Chinese)