fuel cell

New York’s fuel cell system manufacturer Plug Power has inked a supply order of 39 fuel cells to California-based fast-food distributor Golden State Foods.

The 39 GenDrive zero-emission fuel cells are aimed to power 39 material handling vehicles at the Golden State Foods’ new distribution centre in Chicago, US.

Power-plant developer FuelCell Energy has added Christopher Sotos, senior vice president of strategy, mergers and acquisitions at power distributor NRG Energy, to its board of directors.

At US-based NRG Energy, Sotos is responsible for the development, execution and implementation of the company's business strategy across all platforms, retail and wholesale business models as well as smaller venture capital investments and strategic relationships.

He has over two decades of experience in corporate financial management and business strategy.

"His power generation industry experience and expertise in business strategy and financial management make him a valuable addition to the FuelCell Energy Board and the Company it serves," said Chip Bottone, chief executive officer at FuelCell Energy.

"FuelCell Energy provides one of the few clean distributed energy baseload solutions for customers. I look forward to actively contributing to the growth of FuelCell Energy and providing insight into fuel cell applications in the power markets,” said Sotos.

In August this year, NRG Energy bought $35m of FuelCell Energy shares and extended a $40m loan in order to enable FuelCell to invest in project development, project finance and working capital support. NRG Energu now owns 6% of the outstanding common stock of the Connecticut-based company.

General Electric (GE) is to set up a fuel cell pilot development and manufacturing plant in the state of New York, US.

The plant will be run by a new “in-house start-up” the company has created, consisting of a team of 17 engineers.

Head of the independent start-up is GE’s advanced technology leader at GE Global Research, Johanna Wellington. Her Global Research division team developed a technology that enables a fuel cell power generation with 65% efficiency and the ability to reach 95% when the system is configured to capture waste heat produced by the process.

The GE’s start-up will utilise this technology at the new plant. The basic configuration of the system can generate between 1 to 10MW of power, the company claimed.

"We have all of the speed, agility and focus of a small startup while leveraging the strength of a big company," said Wellington. The fuel cell development received financial background from GE’s ecomagination programme and can generate electricity at any location with a supply of natural gas, GE claimed.

"The cost challenges associated with the technology have stumped a lot of people for a long time," said Wellington. "But we made it work, and we made it work economically," she added.

UK-based fuel cell developer ACAL Energy is close to completing a £15m ($25m) funding round to commercialise its low-platinum fuel cell for automotive and stationary use.

When closed, the funding round will enable ACAL to bring the redox liquid-based catalyst system to production-level ready for licencing to automotive OEMs. ACAL has a number of OEMs interested in the product because of the lower costs and longer lifetime than competitors.

Brendan Bilton, ACAL’s chief commercial officer, said: “Automotive companies want fuel cells to cost $40kW but none of the normal fuel cells can achieve this. We could get to 20% lower than that.”

Major automotive companies that have announced fuel cell electric vehicle designs require a lifecycle of more than 5,000 hours with less than 10% degradation to match an ICE vehicle. The catalyst of ACAL’s fuel cell is based on polyoxometalates rather than platinum which allows it to run for 10,000 hours with no degradation. The platinum is the point of degradation in regular fuel cells so removing 80% of it makes ACAL's cells more durable.

Bilton said the technology will be licenced to OEMs who could potentially have them in cars four years after licencing: “Many companies are looking at having first generation fuel cell vehicles on the road by 2020. We are aiming for second generation,” he explained.

The fuel cells have the potential to be used as a source of power generation as well as for automotive use, which could turn a person’s car into their generator also. This idea is attracting interest in regions that suffer frequent power outages such as Japan.

The commercialisation funding round is being finalised to allow the licensing of the technology in the next two months.

ITM Power has commissioned a rapid response electrolyser for Thüga Group’s power-to-gas demonstration plant within the Frankfurt am Main gas distribution network.

The demo plant, at the premises of Mainova AG in Schielestraße in Frankfurt am Main, has injected hydrogen generated via an electrolytic process into the distribution network for the first time.

The electrolyser converts energy from electrical to chemical, which facilitates the storage of electricity. The electrolyser feeds the gas to the distribution network at pressure of 3.5 bar, which negates the need for a compressor.

Following a successful system demonstration, trial operation ahead of schedule at the start of 2014.