Fuel Cell Applications

State of the States: Fuel Cells in America 2011 Download the report HERE. with foreword from Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy

Stationary power, transportation power, and portable power are the three principal markets addressed by the fuel cell industry. Stationary power includes any application having the fuel cells at a fixed location. Transportation power embraces all motive applications on land, sea or air. Portable power applies to the power sources of portable equipment. Fuel cells supplied to these markets range from multi-megawatt systems to micro cells of a few milliwatts.

Fuel cells produce electricity electrochemically without combustion accounting for billions of kilo watt hours of electrical energy - kWh(e) - worldwide. They are characterized as quiet, highly efficient, lacking polluting emissions, consistently reliable and predictably precise. Some attributes of fuel cells are listed below:

• Energy-efficient. High temperature fuel cells deliver upward of 47 percent energy efficiency well above that of US central station efficiencies of 33 percent. Combined with a turbine fuel cell efficiencies approach 70 percent, and in combined heat and power applications (CHP) higher efficiencies can be achieved.

• Emission-less. Fuel cells have near zero, ultra low air emissions unmatched by any other fuel consuming technology.

• Noise-less. A fuel cell stack has no moving parts nor combustion and consequently are silent in operation.

• Dependable. Fuel cells provide high quality power to critical operations as part of distributed generation solutions immune to general grid based blackouts, brownouts and voltage sags.

• Fuel Diverse. Fuel cells can employ various fuel sources such as natural gas, anaerobic digester gas (ADG), propane, ethanol, methane, methanol, biogas, coal gas or hydrogen.

• Grid Independent. Because fuel cells operate independently of any high power electrical grid they are readily expandable and immune from attacks or natural disasters affecting operation of the grid systems.

These attributes suit fuel cells to a wide spectrum of applications. Fuel cell power systems are quiet, environmentally clean, highly efficient converters of fuel into electricity with the by product of thermal energy for space heating, hot water or absorption cooling. Stationary fuel cell systems replace or supplement traditionally supplied grid power and enable distributed power generation as briefly discussed below:

• Commercial Power Generation relates to telecommunication sites, remote communication facilities, office buildings, industrial plants, laboratories, hospitals, computer and data centers, hotels, schools and many small businesses.

• Industrial Power Generation employs processed industrial by-products as fuel sources in fuel cells to generate electricity and thermal energy creating economies in power consumption and minimizing the frequently high costs of transporting and disposing of waste material.

• Residential Power Supply fuel cells can deliver all or most of the heating/cooling electric power needs of a home or multifamily residence. Simple smart meters can monitor and adjust consumption to budgetary targets according to variations in ambient temperatures, switching excesses to utility companies for energy credits.

• Military Capability is enhanced with fuel cell power. Applications of quieter, lighter, faster refueling, computing, weapon and surveillance systems together with base support and medical facilities create innumerable applications for improving fuel efficiencies and saving lives of our forces both in training and in action. The economic benefit of reducing the 70 percent of the logistics load devoted to fuel alone must be a significant number as well as improving speed of responsive deployment.

• Portable Equipment Power includes the sub category of micro systems enabling portability ranging from milliwatts to several kilowatts of environmentally benign power capacity. Four categories include replacement power, battery support, battery replacement, and creative applications involving expendable or reusable cartridge refueling devices. Target systems include power for the rapidly expanding markets for cell phones, wi-fi devices, personal data and tablet computers, and entertainment systems which may well account for a third of residential electricity demand.

• Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCV) to ameliorate the national dependence upon supplies of fossil fuels from overseas and to lessen environmental impacts of global climate change are a government research and security priority. Many motor vehicle manufacturers are responding vigorously to this need. Its requirement for a hydrogen refueling infrastructure to become the target province of either "Big Oil" or the utility companies as they face the onset of distributed generation and the need to take up their supply-side generating slack.