The plant taken to the trade fair, at real scale

Nel ASA is a Norwegian company producing hydrogen electrolysers at plant scale. Its M-series PEM electrolysers and alkaline systems are imposing installations, several metres tall and thousands of kilos heavy, built for industrial hydrogen production on large sites.

The problem: at European Hydrogen Week in Brussels, Nel wanted potential customers, investors and partners to experience its technology. Not as a brochure, not as an animation on a screen, but at scale, immersive and interactive. Transporting a physical electrolyser into a conference hall is obviously not an option.

Nel had under 8 weeks to build something that would fit the stand, demand no technical knowledge from visitors, and make the complexity of its technology approachable for a broad audience.

What came out of it was a VR product experience of roughly 3 minutes, letting visitors at European Hydrogen Week in Brussels take in the Nel electrolysers at real scale. A simple menu lets the visitor pick PEM or alkaline, and from there they step virtually into the plant.

The experience opens on a single electrolyser unit up close: visitors walk around it, tap hotspots for technical explanation, and feel the scale of the thing against a human body. The environment then grows into a full M-5000 plant layout, dozens of units side by side, at the size of an industrial complex.

Everything ran on standalone Meta Quest 2 headsets. No PC, no network, no complicated setup on the stand. Nel staff could get a visitor going in thirty seconds, without VR experience of their own.