Back in 2020, Cummins sold Douglas County PUD a lovely little vision of the hydrogen future. Public utility. Wells Dam. Renewable power. Clean-tech halo. A 5MW PEM electrolyser, proudly pitched as the largest and first of its kind in use by a public utility in the United States, expected to be operational in 2021. Fast-forward to April 2026 and Nel is now supplying the project instead, after trade reporting linked the switch to an apparent Cummins contract failure and a notice of default and material breach. Which is funny in the bleak, expensive way these things usually are. Cummins spent years talking up the hydrogen future, then apparently managed to miss even the part where it was supposed to deliver the bloody machine.

That is the real Cummins party trick. Grand sermons about transition, innovation and tomorrow’s energy system – followed by the awkward detail that tomorrow kept turning up and the kit still was not there. The hydrogen future, it turns out, was not cancelled. It just had to be ordered from somebody else.

Back When The Future Still Fit In A Press Release

The original pitch was immaculate.

Cummins would supply the electrolyser. Douglas County PUD would turn clean hydro power into hydrogen at Wells Dam. The thing would help balance the grid, reduce wear on turbine units, and open the door to a brave new world of public-utility hydrogen in Washington state. It was exactly the sort of shiny little case study Cummins loves – technical enough to sound serious, green enough to sound righteous, and public enough to sound vaguely noble.

And for a while, that was the story. Cummins had the hydrogen future in a box. It had the quotes, the optimism, the big-number symbolism and the sort of clean-energy self-regard that makes boardrooms feel warm and faintly holy.

The only real snag was that the future appears to have been running a few fucking years late.

Then Time Started Doing What Time Does

This is where the comedy gets darker.

In August 2020, Cummins said the project was expected to be operational in 2021. By March 2021, Douglas PUD was breaking ground and talking about hydrogen production starting later that year. By February 2023, the district was already pushing ahead with phase two and buying a second 5MW electrolyser because the infrastructure at Baker Flats had room to grow. By October 2025, Douglas PUD was still describing the facility as under construction and only “close to commissioning”.

That is a long time for a project that was supposed to be the nice clean future.

Enough time for the brochure gloss to dry, crack and start curling at the edges.

Enough time for everybody involved to discover that there is a difference between unveiling the hydrogen future and actually getting the bastard to switch on.

The Public Utility Got Sick Of Waiting

Then came the part Cummins will not want framed in mood lighting.

At its February 17, 2026 commission meeting, Douglas PUD said the contractor for the hydrogen production facility had been unable to meet its contractual obligations to complete the facility by the November 2024 deadline. The district said the contractor had been placed in default, that an emergency had been declared, and that it was planning a new path forward.

Douglas PUD did not name the contractor in that meeting report.

Trade reporting did the connecting for them.

Gasworld said Douglas PUD had issued a notice of default and material breach to Cummins’ electrolyser division in January 2025, alleging failure to complete the system. Hydrogen Insight likewise reported that Nel had won the job after an apparent breach by the previous supplier, identified in earlier local reporting as Cummins.

So let’s be careful and keep the lawyers calm. The public utility says the contractor failed to meet obligations and was placed in default. Trade reporting says that contractor was Cummins. Nel now has the order.

That is more than enough humiliation without anybody needing to gild the coffin.

Nel Gets The Call, Cummins Gets The Memory

By April 23, 2026, Nel was announcing a fresh $7 million purchase order from Douglas County PUD for PEM electrolyser equipment for the same East Wenatchee hydrogen facility. Nel’s line was exactly what you would expect – visionary customer, public utility first, flexible PEM electrolysers, all the usual clean-energy uplift.

The brutal bit is not the Nel prose. It is what the order implies.

Cummins got the original glory lap.
Nel gets to try finishing the fucking job.

That is the shape of it.

Cummins spent years basking in the reflected glow of a high-profile public-utility hydrogen showcase. Then, after multi-year delays and a default notice aimed at the contractor, a different supplier turns up with a replacement order and a straight face.

If you were trying to write a neat little parable about the difference between hydrogen theatre and hydrogen delivery, you would struggle to improve on that.

The Timing Got Even Better

Because of course it did.

In February 2026, Cummins told the market it would halt new commercial electrolyser activity after a strategic review. The company booked charges tied to the electrolyser business within Accelera and blamed weaker-than-expected hydrogen adoption and softer demand.

Which means the broader corporate picture already looked like this:

Sell the hydrogen future hard.
Miss timelines.
Take big charges.
Stop chasing new commercial business.
Watch one of the old flagship projects appear to slide out of your hands anyway.

There is a grim elegance to it. The whole thing folds in on itself like a damp cardboard display in a trade-show lobby.

Cummins did not just fail to keep the hydrogen halo gleaming. It managed to turn one of its showcase public-utility stories into a cautionary little farce about overpromising, underdelivering and then pretending the market was the problem all along.

This Is Why The Hydrogen Pitch Deserves Mockery

That is what makes this worth a Cummins Confidential entry.

Not because hydrogen is inherently silly. Not because public utilities should not be experimenting with cleaner energy systems. And not because Nel is somehow the villain for picking up the order.

The piss-taking belongs with Cummins, because Cummins made a performance out of the future and then appears to have tripped over the stage furniture.

This was not some anonymous back-corner project nobody noticed until it went wrong. Cummins publicly used it to tell a story about leadership, innovation and public-utility hydrogen in America. The company chose the spotlight. It chose the language. It chose the symbolism.

Now it gets to live with the chronology.

Expected in 2021.
Still under construction in late 2025.
Contractor in default by early 2026.
Replacement supplier in April.
New commercial electrolyser activity halted anyway.

You do not need to invent a joke when the timeline is already standing there with its trousers round its ankles.

Same Cummins, Different Costume

And that is the bit that should sound familiar.

Cummins has a gift for wrapping industrial ambition in moral mood music. It can make engines sound therapeutic, aftertreatment sound uplifting, student race cars sound like civic virtue and hydrogen projects sound like the future itself arriving in a polished crate.

Then reality barges in wearing muddy boots and asks a very simple question.

Where is the machine?

In this case, the answer appears to have been: not finished, not on time, and not coming from Cummins after all.

The hydrogen future they sold was not impossible.

It was just apparently beyond them.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Cummins Confidential : The Hydrogen Future They Couldn’t Even Deliver On Time