#1 From DJ Booth to Hydrogen Lab – Juergen Rechberger on Belief, Agility, and Simulation Shaping the Future

In this episode, we talk to Jürgen Rechberger, Group Vice President of AVL's Fuel Cell and Energy segment. 

From DJ to strategist, Jürgen is pushing the boundaries of energy technology. We discuss the mindset, methods, and mission behind his work. We discuss everything – from his passion for sustainability and agile teamwork to the crucial role of simulation in the development of electrolysers. 

Rechberger provides insights into how AVL is applying its expertise from the automotive industry to the energy sector. We explore the reality behind the buzzword “digital twin” and why predicting electrolyzer lifetime could be a game changer. 

Plus, a personal reflection on focus, belief, and staying true to your mission in a world full of distractions.

Learn more about AVL's simulation expertise:

https://www.avl.com/en/simulation-solutions

Want to learn more about Juergen Rechberger? Follow him on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juergen-rechberger/

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📧Get in touch with the AVL Simulation Podcast team:

Simulation@avl.com

➡️Follow us on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/avl-simulation/

Keep simulating, keep innovating, keep pushing the boundaries!

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:20 #1 From Nightclubs to Net Zero
• 5:55 #2 Not a Nerd, but a Navigator: Turning Sustainability into a Business Strategy
• 7:30 #3 The Productivity Toolkit: What Powers a Brain That Never Sleeps
• 9:20 #4 From 40,000 to 80,000 Hours: Use of Simulations to Predict and Extend the Lifetime of Electrolyzers
• 14:05 #5 Transferring Decades of Simulation Know-How From the Road to the Energy Grid
• 15:40 #6 How Agile Thinking and Cross-Functional Teamwork Drove a Breakthrough in Electrolyzers
• 18:50 #7 Digital Twin – Buzzword or Breakthrough in Hydrogen Technology?
• 20:35 #8 Closing: What Juergen Rechberger would tell his 20-year-old self today?
• 21:20 Outro

Transcript

Host

We think about AVL as a technology universe. Juergen Rechberger, where are you located in this universe? 

Juergen Rechberger

So, thanks for the invitation first, to be the first one, right? It's always nice to be. So regarding the AVL universe my central focus point is in energy, right? So AVL has a little bit of diversification strategy, because as we all know, automotive is a little bit difficult. We are, since years, working on very strategically on diversification, and one of the main areas we want to go to is energy technologies, and that's my focus area. I have a few other roles still around that, that's still everything regarding hydrogen mobility. Then one focus area is aviation. Another one is rail, and another one is marine. 

Host

Aviation, tell us more about that. 

Juergen Rechberger

Aviation is super exciting because, even in my background, when I was 14, I was five years in an aviation school, so it's really lot of fun going back into that. So aviation is one of these hard to abate sectors, right? It's not so easy to decarbonize aviation, and therefore there are different solutions discussed. One, for example, is just keeping the technologies but switching the fuel to sustainable fuels. That's something we are very active in, in processes how to generate these fuels. But the second topic, also even exciting is a hydrogen airplanes running on a full electric propulsion system with fuel cells, and also that we are very active. It's in the public domain that we're working with Airbus on that to develop, megawatt scale fuel cell main propulsion systems for passenger planes. So that's, that's really exciting. 

Host

Super. So now we know where you're located, but what do you actually do all day at AVL? 

Juergen Rechberger

In theory, what I should do, about two years ago we have created a dedicated global business segment with all these topics I have said before. It's called Hydrogen Industrial Energy, and I'm basically running this, this global business segment. So pushing forward our business and I would say I'm the main stakeholder for all these different areas to keep everything together, follow our strategy, develop our strategy and grow this business for AVL. 

Host

Cool. If you had to give your role a nickname, what would it be? 

Juergen Rechberger

I would say that's, that would be Mr. Sustainability, right? Because coming from my background, a very strong focus on sustainability. And my business is I would say to 100%, 100% ESG, SDG business. I'm convinced that we need to work on sustainability and that's really my driving force. 

Host

Great. Talking about your background a little bit more, what got you into engineering in the first place? 

Juergen Rechberger

Actually, in the first place, I did, in any case, something else. It’s a longer history, but I started actually, as I said five years in a school for aviation, then I went to Vienna, in the university for engineering. But in parallel, actually, I was very much into the, the music industry. 

Juergen Rechberger

So I was starting in Vienna to be a DJ. I was actually more in clubs than in the university. 

Then I stopped the university even for one and a half years, went to New York as a professional DJ. That was fun. But I figured out that it's probably not the healthiest way of life.

So I, I had to stop that. There were too much, too much influences around. So I went back to university, finished the study, and then I got an offer from McKinsey, so I was working then two years for McKinsey. Went to Los Angeles. Los Angeles was a very interesting period at this time because all this emission came up, CO emission vehicles. CO₂ was not a big topic, that's 20 years ago, right? 

But at least the CO emission was a very big topic. And then I started really to get interested and excited about that. But at McKinsey I learned, for me, that I cannot have the impact I wanted to have, right? 

Juergen Rechberger

It's more consulting, it's boundary conditions, it's business cases. So I thought I will have a bigger impact on sustainability, in an engineering technology company, and that's how I came to AVL. 

Host

Awesome. So technology and engineering with bigger impact in your point of view. When people gather around you, what do you think is your gravity? What do people come to you for? 

Juergen Rechberger

Probably that's few points, but for one sure is my drive and my spirit for sustainability, for innovation, but still I'm not a research guy, right? A research guys are usually... we shouldn't say that, but a little bit of nerds, right? I think I'm not that. I'm considering innovation, but how we can make a business out of it, right? 

Juergen Rechberger

Because we can only bring these new fancy technologies into the market to help us on su- stability when they are to some extent, a business case. And I think I'm pretty good in bringing all these, these most important topics together, right? Innovation, sustainability, but then making also a business case out of it. 

Host

You've mentioned the term sustainability already several times. What is the deeper meaning for yourself when you say sustainability? 

Juergen Rechberger

I mean, for me, sustainability has different elements and different levels, right? One is pretty obvious, that is we need to do something against climate change, right? I see it as the biggest threat mankind is facing, so we need to do something against it, right?... but sustainability, for me, it's much more than that. For example, even in relationships, right? You should tend privately to have sustainable relationships. We need, on the business side sustainable relationships. So I see it really as a broad thing, not only related to the environment. 

Host

Going back to your everyday work life… Give us a tool that makes your day ten times more productive. 

Juergen Rechberger

That’s an easy answer. That’s coffee in the morning is the most important thing, otherwise nothing would work. I need to have that. Otherwise, I cannot even go into the first meeting. 

Host

So besides coffee- is there something, that you would tell our audience, you might suggest somebody else in your industry as well to do as a habit? As a daily routine, maybe? 

Juergen Rechberger

I mean, one thing for me which, which I really need to have is really staying up-to-date, right? I have a brain which needs to be occupied 24/7. So my brain basically never rests, so I will always need to confront it with what's going on, right? So I read, I spend time on social media. I read a lot of stuff all the time. And it's not only into my area, right? I want to understand what's going on in politics, in economics, and that's really important for me. 

Host

So when you say your brain never really turns off you might also have a trick or a habit that makes your brain rest and get at ease at some points?

Juergen Rechberger

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was a DJ, right? So music is still super important for me. I'm learning languages for relaxation- which might sound a little bit strange. But I'm learning now since two years Japanese... It's a lot of fun. I really like it, but music is more for the relaxing phase. And I'm traveling about 60% of the year, right? I have a lot of travel time, and I usually fill that up with music. 

Host

Sweet. Now, hard change. Big curve in our discussion. Let's move into simulation, virtualization, and digitalization. What role does simulation play in your area? 

Juergen Rechberger

Yeah, super important one, right? So I can today not even imagine to develop a product without simulation. So it's, it's, it's core of what we do. And, and for me really it is mostly, I would say, if I should choose one of the main drivers, I see development speed, right? So that's for me the, the key that we can push the technology, we can push designs, prototypes in a virtual world first because before we even touch hardware. That’s really the key I think, but it's, it's such a natural thing to do, I cannot even imagine to develop a product without it. 

Host

When thinking about the energy sector, one of the most important topics are electrolyzers. What opportunities and horizons do you see for simulation in the development of electrolyzers? 

Juergen Rechberger

Yeah, quite a lot of actually. So electrolyzers today I would say are still at the let's say average maturity level, right? There's still a lot of things to be improved because so far this market was very small. There was not put too much effort in the development of really high quality mature products. And we are now addressing that in our usual way of working, applying a lot of simulation in that. I think where we are pretty good with electrolyzers is already on the whole performance simulation. 

I think that's more or less solved. But I think there's a lot of potential to extend these capabilities more into prediction, right? So, we need here prediction to its remaining lifetime, to optimize the whole thing, to optimize to its levelized cost of hydrogen. So I see a lot of potential here. 

Host

Now, in the automotive industry virtualization is one of the biggest drivers for change. Give us some insight of the energy sector. How is it there? 

Juergen Rechberger

The energy sector is actually very different to automotive, right? The products are different. The way to develop is different. For example, on the product side, we are talking about products which are 10 to 15 years in the field. So you need guaranteed lifetime of 100,000 hours or even more. So if you look into a power plant, that's basically designed for a lifetime of 30 years, which means also that the products are much, much longer in production. So that's on the one hand side, on the production side, on the product, the product cycle is completely different. 

Juergen Rechberger

But on the other hand side also, the way to develop products is very different, right? Because in the automotive, we all know in Europe we have this A, B, C, D sample till start of production that doesn't exist in the energy technologies. In the energy world we have a one generation development approach. So it's the first thing, what you develop, is it an electrolyzer or whatever, goes already into the field in a field test, ideally with a friendly customer- you learn from that and feed that back into the design. But that's it, right? Then the thing goes into production. So it’s very different to automotive. 

Host

So coming back to the role of simulation, maybe take a little deep dive here looking at the electrolyzers. What capabilities do you see especially at the electrolyzer development?

Juergen Rechberger

... you know, one big thing we are working at the moment really is you know, we have to separate different electrolyzer technologies, right? One topic we have put as a real focus topic this year is damage simulation and remaining lifetime prediction. 

Juergen Rechberger

So what we're doing here, we do that at the moment for PEM electrolyzers- which are now getting a lot of attention in the market. It's pushed into the market by pretty big players like Siemens Energy, Enel Plug Power. So really big players behind it. But what we see is we're still lacking on durability on the one-hand side, but also on capability to predict the lifetime. 

And therefore, we are now working here on a strategic approach to really break that whole thing down into physics-based damage models- which allow us then really to have a digital twin, which is basically simulating what's happening in real time but we can then predict always based on certain operating parameters the actual degradation status, and then do optimizations to extend the life, right? Because that's the objective. At the moment, we are not meeting the industry targets. So we need 60 to 80,000 of lifetime and we are probably at 40. 

Host

Okay. Many people in our audience consider AVL as one of the leading players in the automotive and mobility industry. So everything you are talking about right here is outside of this industry. So why AVL? Where is AVL's value and capabilities in this new energy sector, for AVL new energy sector? 

Juergen Rechberger

Yeah. Uh, I mean, for electrolyzers, I think this, the synergy where we are coming from is the automotive fuel cell, right? 

We have developed, 10, 15 fuel cells for automotive, and electrolyzer is a very similar process. And, I think we have a lot of background knowhow from the fuel cell, which we are now transferring to the electrolyzer. And, I think it works quite well because we also bring in a little bit more systematic development approaches. And in particular what's not so used in the energy world is a lot of these simulation capabilities, right? 

Juergen Rechberger

So I think that's a real USP that we come with the whole automotive background from our development methodologies- and bring them also with the domain knowhow of the electrolyzer into the energy world. 

Of course, we also have to change, right? We cannot now in the energy world do our A, B, C development- which takes five years, right? Also, we need to change in the development approach. But I think we learned that. We set it up. We have now standard development approaches for energy technologies, and that's I think now we have... we are really at a little bit of a sweet spot to bringing the whole years of ex- decades of expertise from the automotive in the energy world. 

Host

Great. One more sudden change in this discussion and in this talk will lead us more to the team and the people behind this change that you mentioned. What are you looking for when, establishing and developing a team to drive change, as you mentioned? 

Juergen Rechberger

I think also here it's various elements, right? You need a certain technology knowhow. You need the skill to develop such a product, right? And this is also different to the past because for these electrolyzers we need completely different skills. It's not only mechanical engineering or something like that, right? We bring in completely new skills like e- electrochemistry, chemistry in general. Of course, we again have mechanical engineering for sure, but there's a lot of electrical engineering. So it needs much more domain and skill knowledge from different areas. And from the personalities, of course, I believe, I really like to work with agile people which are not so much process-driven. And I think that's in general something in Europe we need to reconsider if we look into development times even on the automotive when we are twice as long or even more than our Chinese friends at developing these products, right? So I think in general, in everything we do we need to look how we become more agile and to not block ourselves so much by methods and processes. 

Host

Let's try to take a deep dive here as well. Give us some examples in the energy and the development of electrolyzers maybe where you could see agility and being an agile- having an agile approach. 

Juergen Rechberger

I think I have a pretty good example for that. So we started for example, PEM electrolyzer stack development, which was really completely new for AVL. We started it last year. We have a dedicated team for PEM fuel cell stack design in Vancouver, in Canada, which we built up about six years ago. And we gave them the task last year, "Guys, ... Fuel cell is nice, but now we need an electrolyzer, right?" And of course there was a little bit of hesitation, some resistance but we convinced the team, and they then put together very, very agile, very dynamic approach. And so we started it in January. And in September, we had the first PEM electrolyzer stack on the test bed with actually superior performance to the market. 

Juergen Rechberger

So we achieved 73% efficiency, which in the industry average is around 60 to 63 or something like that. So even, even that a, a perfect result. And then based on this result, we could even already convince a month later, one of the biggest energy technology companies of China to develop for start of production a 2.5 megawatt electrolyzer stack. And that was only possible by a very agile team accepting the target and go for it. 

Host

Cool. Before we come to the finish line, I wanna go back to the digital twin one more time. You have mentioned it. It is, one of the most used buzzwords in probably every technology, industry, for sure in the automotive and in the industry sector and energy sector. What's behind a well-working digital twin? 

Juergen Rechberger

I think I can tell you where we want to go to because we are not there yet, right? So digital twins of industries to some extent are already using that for pretty simple tasks, for predictive maintenance, and things like that. But where we want to get to is really to extend what I mentioned before, to extend that to really more reliable information on remaining lifetime, on durability, on recommendations, for example, to change the operating conditions to extend lifetime. And one additional aspect is, of course, electrolysers are very much driven with renewable energies like solar and wind. So, we might even include some weather information- real-time, some outlook for the next seven days, to really optimize the strategy, how you operate it, optimized in terms of lowest possible degradation. And at the end considering all the weather environment also towards lowest cost of hydrogen, which is the target at the end of the day. 

Host

Great. You mentioned something that we are working towards to. What do you think is the timeline? 

Juergen Rechberger

I mean, one big step, I think we have it... we are addressing this here with the, with the damage models, right? 

Uh, because that's, that's one of the key. I think when we have that, probably we need another year to implement the other functionality. So, I think in about two years we could be there. 

Host

Great. Last question here. If you had to give your 20-year-old self some advice for his future.

What would it be? 

Juergen Rechberger

I think it would be... What to some extent I did also is stay with that what you really believe in, right? Do what you believe in. Don't get distracted. In world we live today, there's a lot of distractions, right? A lot of that is not necessarily helpful. So, really find the things you believe in and then follow this mission. 

Host

Juergen, thank you so much for your time. 

Juergen Rechberger

You're welcome. It was nice to be here.