Fuel Cell Maker FuelCell Energy Looks To Farms For A Market

August 17, 2010

The United States has more than 2 million farms. What if each one installed a methane-to-energy fuel cell power plant?

The market opportunity may be overstated somewhat. Farms come in all sizes and not all have enough organic waste from animals or plants to run a 500-kilowatt or 1-megawatt fuel cell. Plus, the equipment can be expensive, especially if a digester is needed to decompose manure or plant residue.

But, if neighborhood farms come together to pool their investments and contribute their wastes, an active sales pipeline may develop.

The potential seems real. For example, FuelCell Energy of Danbury, CT, announced

Tuesday that it sold a 1.4-megawatt fuel cell that will be used at the Olivera Egg Ranch in California. The fuel cell will run on methane gas generated by decomposing chicken waste and power for three Olivera facilities. While the cell is large for such an operation, so is the company. Olivera sells 14 million cartons of eggs a year.

Not all farms need as much electricity. Smaller FuelCell Energy cells are running at Gills Onions, the nation’s largest onion processor, also in California. Two 300-kilowatt cells are fed by up to 300,000 pounds of daily onion peels – which are ground up and fed into a digester where they produce methane.

The FuelCell Energy says waste-to-energy facilities are part of its target market. Included are wastewater treatment plants, which also produce methane from the dirty water.

Bloom Energy, which presently is focused on corporate customers, also points to the agrarian market as a future opportunity. During a July appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival, co-founder and CEO KR Sridhar said he envisions a time in the near future when a village, such as one in Africa, could run a cell with biomass to generate electricity then distributed the energy to neighbors on a closed micro grid.

One challenge in the next few years will be cost. A 500-kilowatt fuel cell can sell for $1.7 million and require another $150,000 for installation. A digester also is expensive. Many farms will find this equipment out of reach.

Presently, typical agricultural waste-to-energy systems rely on burning methane and turning turbines rather than running fuel cells.  Cargill, for instance, operates an anaerobic digester at an Idaho farm, converting manure from 6,000 cows into 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a month. The electricity is sold to the local power grid. Others systems operate in Washington State and elsewhere.

The difference is a fuel cell doesn’t rely on combustion. No emissions result.

Because of cost, perhaps the real opportunity will come from neighborhood or regional pooling. This will require carting waste and plant clippings, and it will change the cost equation somewhat. It will be interested to see if creative services and solutions evolve to allow this to happen.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Are Fuel Cells The Next Big Thing For Phone Companies?

June 7, 2010

Solar and wind-powered cellular base stations are finally taking off. Next up: hydrogen fuel cells, compressed air storage and lithium ion batteries.

A push for renewable-energy base stations appears to be gaining momentum in the telecom industry, with routers and other network-access gear likely to follow suit and go green someday.

The adoption of solar and wind powered cellular base stations seems to be picking up as solar prices fall.

The market acceptance is fueled by lower costs, particular after last year’s sharp fall in solar panels prices. But system engineering is making great strides as well, translating higher solar and wind energy efficiencies into higher overall product performance.

The expanding market is the reflection of a multi-year push by the telecommunications industry for alternative power – and in that sense it mirrors the initiatives of other industry trying to grasp the energy realities of the 21st Century.

But the story has a unique twist. The industry has an obvious starting point: the remote cellular base stations springing up in hard-to-reach developing communities, where trucking in fuel for diesel generators is expensive.

Until recently, solar and wind energy were the two technologies mature enough for deployment. Still, high costs caused the market to evolve slowly, with only a few hundred solar base stations sold a year.

That changed last year. With the dramatic price reductions in solar panels during 2009, the market accelerated. As many as 5,000 solar powered based stations now operate around the world, and, by 2012, this is estimated to balloon to more than 100,000.

“We see a dramatic shift in the market,” says Frederic Wauquiez, a marketing director for alternative energy programs at Alcatel-Lucent. Low-cost electricity from the grid is holding back buying in developed countries, but places such as India, China and Africa are showing growth.

With that success, new technologies are coming to market. Among the leaders are Motorola, which in the past year more than doubled the base stations using hydrogen fuel cells for back-up power at its SINE network in Denmark. More than 100 are in service.

Sprint also employs at least 250 hydrogen fuels cells for back-up power at its cellular towers with technology from ReliOn of Spokane and Altergy. The company received a $7.3 million Energy Department grant to boost its back-up power capability to 72 hours from 15.

Alcatel-Lucent is working with fuel cells in limited trails and says the technology will be the next it introduces. The company’s position is that fuel cells will never be the sole source of base-station power, Wauquiez says. The economics are not there when hydrogen must be carted into a remote site, he says.

At the same time, the French company is working with compressed-air energy storage, advanced vertical-axis wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries. Compressed air will come, Wauquiez says, but the efficiency is low. Advanced turbine designs are “interesting,” and Alcatel-Lucent has battery manufacturers trying to develop the right battery for its needs, he says.

Alcatel-Lucent finds the alternative fuels market important enough to mention in the Corporate Social Responsibility Report it issued last week. The company estimates it has as many as 340 alternative-fuel energy base stations in the field, a 40 percent increase in a year and a more upbeat achievement than the report’s 30 percent target.

So what is this year’s objective? Wauquiez won’t say. It is still being hashed out, he said, but it will be more ambitious than in 2009. Perhaps this confidence is a sign renewable energy products really do have a foothold in the industry.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

FuelCell Energy Shares The Fuel Cell Spotlight With Bloom Energy

April 9, 2010

After 40 years of making fuel cells, FuelCell Energy could be ready to hit the big time.

The company has existed below the limelight in an industry where higher profile companies, such as Bloom Energy, are making big names for themselves. But a recent decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to permit two of the state’s big three utilities to use natural-gas fuel cells in customer deployments may shine a brighter spotlight on the Danbury, CT, company.

FuelCell Energy is a 40 year old company with a heritage of working with the Department of Defense. Now it has its first deals pending with U.S. utilities.

PG&E will install a 1.4 megawatt fuel cell from FuelCell (and a 200 kilowatt Bloom System) while Southern California Edison will install two. Both utilities still have to finalize these projects, but the path is open.

“It’s a huge step,” says Trevor Rodd, FuelCell’s West Coast director of business development. “The utilities consider us a real alternative now.”

In an industry that lives and dies on energy efficiency, FuelCell tells a good tale. The company’s molten carbonate fuel cell boasts 47 percent efficiency at turning fuel to electricity. That efficiency rises to as much as 90 percent if the cell’s heat is used to warm buildings or pools. (Molten carbonate cells run hot.)

That puts it close to or ahead of competitors such as Ceres Power, ClearEdge and Panasonic, all of which fall in the 80 to 90 percent efficiency range when heat and power are combined. In these fuel cells, roughly half of the energy comes in the form of heat.

Bloom’s Bloom Box generates electricity at a higher 50 to 57 percent efficiency – or about twice the level of the overall power grid-because of its unusual structure that relies on ceramic plates made of zirconium oxides to transfer electrons. But its server doesn’t generate much heat-the heat produced gets used internally by the box.

Whether a customer choose FuelCell, Ceres or Bloom depends on their energy needs. Ceres, Panasonic, Oorja Protonics and ClearEdge fuel cells for homes and small businesses while Bloom and FuelCell aim for industrial customers, and a dividing line exists over whether customers need power or power and heat.

FuelCell offers much greater capacities than Bloom and the other companies, with its largest cell generating 2.8 MW of power compared with Bloom’s 100 kW. And the fuel cells are equally flexible with their choice of fuel.

The two 1.4 MW cells PG&E may use at California State University East Bay and San Francisco State University run on natural gas, turning the fuel to hydrogen before generating electricity.

Others of the 75 fuel cells the company has in operation around the world sit alongside wastewater treatment plants and draw fuel from the methane, or biogas, coming from the facilities. FuelCell has another project with the U.S. Navy – a diesel-powered fuel cell installed on a battleship.

After four decades of work with the Department of Defense, FuelCell is hardy a household name in the industry. That may change. Since opening to commercial business in 2003, the company has placed 50 fuel cells in California alone. Now with its first deal with a U.S. utility a step closer to completion, that number could rise.

And with it, the company’s fortunes.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Bloom Gets The Headlines But Fuels Cell Business Is Expanding Rapidly Elsewhere

March 22, 2010

Bloom energy seems to get the headlines when it comes to energy-generating fuel cells.

But this still tiny start-up is nowhere near top dog in a market that grew 41 percent last year, despite the global downturn.

Fuel cell shipments grew 41 percent last year despite the recession and car makers promised fuel-cell autos by 2015

Fuel cells are coming of age and most are getting little public recognition. Fuel cells are replacing power plants, powering food stores and going into residences to eliminate the need to draw energy from the electrical grid.

Last year, sales rose 41 percent, with 24,000 fuel cells shipping to users. This number is still small. But the prospect of employing fuel cells to make businesses or homes power self-sufficient is spawning big dreams of a world that no longer knows black outs or utility bills.

Bloom Energy last month launched its solid oxide cell, a shed-sized box targeting the commercial market and costing more than $700,000. The box uses a fuel, like methane or nature gas, to generate electricity. It anticipates a $3,000 consumer product in several years.

But such a product is already in the market. Nippon Oil sold about 2,500 home systems to Japanese consumers last year, and Toyota, along with Kyocera, Osaka Gas, Aisin Seiki, has plans to introduce its own model.

South Korea hopes to spawn a market of its own by granting 80 percent rebates to consumers.

Corporate customers are speaking up as well. Whole Foods is preparing to convert a second store. Utilities also want in. FuelCell Energy is installing 27.3 MW of capacity in Connecticut. Korea’s POSCO is installing more than twice that amount.

Meanwhile, progress continues in transportation. The number of hydrogen fuel stations in the U.S. almost doubled to 69 last year, with 27 in California, the most of any state. That’s because car makers are signing up. In 2009, companies including Ford, Honda, GM, Hyundai and Renault committed to having fuel-cell cars in the market by 2015.

Sure, Bloom gets to take the bows. But many in the industry aren’t standing still waiting for the applause to die down.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Connecticut Boast Energy Efficient Apartment Towers Is Model For Other States

March 15, 2010

The 32-story apartment building is located in the heart of downtown New Haven, across the street from the New York train and a short walk to Yale University.

New Haven building has a green, irrigated roof and makes use of fuel cells for energy

But these features may not be its biggest draw. The building, with 500 dwellings, is packed with the latest in energy savings innovations, including a pool run by a fuel cell, elevators that generate their own power as they move and an irrigated green roof.

The developers, Becker+Becker, boast it is the most advanced building in Connecticut. And they may be on to something. It has drawn fawning admiration (and a visit) from outgoing Senator Christopher Dodd. HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims paid a call. And New Haven Mayor John DeStefano claims the structure is exactly what Barack Obama means when he says green economy.

Its energy-savings features include a half-acre, green irrigated roof, a total of 400 KW of on-site fuel cells, electric car charging stations, elevators with energy-capture technology, waste-heat recovery, high-efficiency lighting with motion sensors, low-flow fixtures, insulated windows, recycled-stone countertops and thermostats that detect when people are home.

Appliances have Energy Star ratings, and the garage is equipped with both bike racks and a Zipcar sharing program. The building is the first in the state with an LEED platinum rating.

Becker+Becker said Monday it should half the carbon footprint of comparable towers. Energy savings are to be passed on to residents in the form of lower utility bills.

No unit prices were available. But local reports suggest the penthouse will go for a whopping $4,700 a month.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Running A Bloom Box May Not Be As Cheap As The Company Hopes

March 1, 2010

Bloom Energy’s new commercial fuel cell is billed as an effective way for companies such as FedEx or Coca-Cola to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity they use. But at what price?

The low costs of operating a Bloom Energy Server rely on state and federal subsidies that aren't available everywhere

Making the new Energy Server pay may not be as easy as the secretive Silicon Valley star-up may like.

Bloom officials argue their tool-shed-sized power box produces electricity at less than the cost of buying power over the grid from utilities. But their 8 cents a kWh to 10 cents a kWh projection for the 10-year life of the machine adds in generous government incentives that may or may not remain in place.

Without the subsidies, the Bloom box hums a different tune. According to an analysis from Lux Research, electricity costs without the incentives are 13 cents a kWh to 14 cents a kWh, with about 9 cents coming from $700,000 to $800,000 cost of buying the 100 kW cell. The remainder comes from the cost of fuel, such as natural gas or methane.

The average retail cost for electricity in the U.S. is 11 cents a kWh.

The Bloom alternative may make sense in a state such as California, where customers can take advantage of a 30 percent federal tax credit and a $2,500 per kW state rebate. New York and Connecticut also have fuel-cell rebates, as do many countries around the world. But making the Bloom box pay in jurisdictions without the subsidy is another question.

While Bloom Energy offers the compelling notion of a less polluting, lower cost alternative to traditional fossil fuel energy, the reality is more work needs to be done. Mass-producing the boxes should lower their costs. FedEx predicts its investment in the Energy Server should pay for itself in five years. It will be interesting to see what the equation for Bloom’s next generation power box looks like at that time.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Clean Energy Bloom Boxes Still Have A Dirty Side

February 24, 2010

In the gush of enthusiasm for Bloom Energy’s new energy box, one topic has received scant attention: its environmental impact.

Coca-Cola expected five Bloom boxes will help it cut the carbon footprint of an Odwalla plant by 35 percent.

The hype is that the new Bloom Energy Server is ready to save the world, to generate electricity without producing greenhouse gases. It is not quite that simple.

When most people think of fuel cells – Bloom hut-sized device is in fact a fuel cell – they think of hydrogen cells, which consume hydrogen and oxygen and produce heat and water. Very clean.

The Bloom Box is different. It requires oxygen and a fuel, such as natural gas, methane or biofuel. So while it generates electricity without combustion, it does produce the greenhouse gas CO2.

At a coming out event Wednesday morning, Bloom argued the box’s emissions were substantially less than those of a traditional power plant. Hence the claim of clean energy.

But it is a matter of degrees. Bloom says its new 100 kW box is 67 percent cleaner than a coal-fired plant, the dirtiest of the traditional electric plants. To drive home this point, it offered testimony from its first Fortune 500 customers.

Coca-Cola, for instance, has five boxes it intends to install at its Odwalla plant in California. The Energy Servers will run on biogas, generate 30 percent of the facility’s power and cut its carbon footprint by 35 percent. Coca was the most detailed.

Bank of America plans to use five Bloom boxes to run a call center in Southern California. The units will replace diesel generators and cut carbon emissions, though the company didn’t say exactly how much.

On its Web site, Bloom aims to be more specific. Customers will cut CO2 emissions by 40 percent to 100 percent, depending on the fuel they use, and virtually eliminate sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxide and other smog-forming emission. A biofuel would likely equate to the 100 percent claim, though it, too, would produce CO2.

Looked at another way, says Bloom, since the Energy Servers first appeared at customer sites in July 2008, they have generated more than 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity and reduced CO2 by about 14 million pounds.

That’s an important step. But alone it wouldn’t solve the climate crisis.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Panasonic Touts Hydrogen Fuel Cell For Homes

January 8, 2010

Panasonic is eying the U.S. market for an at home hydrogen fuel cell.

The product has been available in the Japan for a year and is sold through utilities. It generates electricity and hot water, making homes more self sufficient.

The goal is to make the unit more affordable by bring its price below $6,500 in five years, the consumer electronics company said the Consumer Electronics Show. It runs on methane, or natural gas.

The problem is that it generates only 1 kilowatt of electricity, enough for a small apartment. The output will need to rise for larger U.S. homes.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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