Tuesday's News rife with FC Commercialization

I hope to make some individual posts on the recent news, perhaps tonight. But to sum up:

FuelCell Energy, while still waiting on orders for its CT Project 100 68 MW worth of installations and the still holding Freedom Tower potential, has had its partnership with German Gas Giant Linde bear its first fruit. Linde secured 4 orders for California wastewater treatment totaling 3.9 megawatts. the units are the new technology (20% more power) DFCs, 3/1.2 MW and 1/300 kW. Linde has a bunch (100's) of ww plants as customers, primarily in Germany, but otherwise scattered around the world. CA offers the biggest subsidy, but this bodes well for the future.

Hydrogenics, following fellow canuck Ballard's lead by leaning down its non-FC power business, recently laying off a bunch test equipment employees, has received a follow-on order for 3 of its German midi-buses. The buses will be used in a high-profile Water and Clean development conference in Spain next summer. It's still a shame that FCs remain so low-profile in the US.

In Japan, Matsushita(Panasonic) and Toshiba FC both announced plans for gearing up to mass-produce their mCHP systems to the order of 10,000/year by 2010/2011. Ebara made a similar non-specific announcement with their own Ballard-licensed production, and Nippon Oil clearly has plans (and the resources) to do the same with its recently purchased Sanyo technology and production facilities. They are all assuming they will be able to bring down the reformer cost by then, whether they move to HT PEM or find another solution. Or else they'll have a lot of residential fuel cell systems for sale cheap to anyone with a bunch of hydrogen.

And lastly, on my home front, UMass Amherst garnered a seed grant from the NSF of $1.5M to begin a fuel cell research program, with $10's of millions more in a couple years if they do it right. They'll be trying to figure why fuel cell electrolytes work. I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But then again, I wouldn't turn down the money.

Siemens SOFC Surfaces in Japan with 125 kW CHP

Siemens' only statement of note at the FC Seminar was that it was shifting its focus from large-scale hybrid power generation to mid-size CHP systems. Its previous foray into CHP was via the now-departed Fuel Cell Technology which used a 5 kW Siemens stack in its few CHP installations, including a successful dormitory placement in Toronto some years back. But FCT handled all the BOP and heating for the system, and upon FCT's demise, Acumentrics ended up with the technology and key personnel, not Siemens.

The scene has now shifted to Japan where Siemens had quietly engineered an development and marketing agreement with technology and engineering conglomorate Meidensha Corporation in 2005, a partnership similar to the successful one forged earlier by Marubeni and FuelCell Energy. It seems that Meidensha has been working on the balance of plant and heating portion, and has been paying close attention to the 250 kW - 1 MW the FCE molten carbonate systems installations by Marubeni, and the recent installations by Fuji of its revitalized 100 kW PAFC systems. Meidensha - know locally as MEIDEN, says it will be ready to install 125 kW system in FY2008 which begins next April, and will provide all operations and maintenance. Applications will probably include waste water treatment and breweries (has your Kirin been tasting different lately?) and the sizable Hospital and Hotel markets.

Siemens only stack relibility and efficiency reporting has come via the required annual DOE SECA documentation, so it's a wait-and-see situation to find out if we will have the first actual commercially viable SOFC installations in the world.

Siemens has claim to the longest-running SOFC development program (is that good?), so success is definitely possible. Regardless, this may put competative Mitsubishi HI and Rolls Royce FC into action with their large-scale stationary SOFC plans.

Talking points: Korea, China, spark spread