speaking of fuel cells Steve, interesting little story :
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
KNIGHTRIDDER NEWS SERVICE
NEW YORK -- In the heart of a city electric by nature, the Central Park
police station had too little power.
Antiquated lines provided so little juice to the historic 19th-century precinct
house that police couldn't run electronic fingerprint machines or air-condition
the whole station. Getting to the 20th century with new power lines would
have cost $1.2 million.
Instead, the police skipped right to the 21st century and for $1 million got
their own power plant -- a clean, ultra-efficient fuel cell. Now they have
enough juice to run high-tech gadgetry, charge four electric police cars and
light up a nearby summer stage where the Metropolitan Opera performs. On
May 1, they cut themselves off from New York's vaunted power grid.
The Central Park police are pioneers in what experts see as a new era of
power production. Growing numbers of businesses this summer are turning on
small, economical and reliable power plants to wean themselves from utilities.
Private homes will be next, with hundreds of test residential generators
scheduled for installation starting next month. Plug Power LLC of Latham,
N.Y., hopes to begin selling dishwasher-sized fuel cells for the home for less
than $4,000 in just 18 months and sees an initial market of 25 million homes.
Researchers say personal power is poised to explode into everyday life
just like personal computers in 1984 and cellular phones a few years after
that.
These new systems provide more reliable power and cut air pollution,
supporters say, because they produce power and hot water. The hot water --
which can also be used for heating and air conditioning -- makes the systems
two to three times more efficient than more conventional power sources.
"The era of big [central power plants] is certainly over," said Chuck
Linderman, director of energy supply policy for the Edison Electric Institute, a
power utility trade group.
Unlike the Central Park precinct, most companies that use personal power
don't cut themselves off from the electric grid. They stay connected, using the
grid as a backup. Some even hope to sell excess power back to the electric
companies.
The utility industry is torn by all this. Some companies are putting up
roadblocks because they envision lost customers.
The Clinton administration has proposed a bill, still pending on Capitol Hill,
that would remove some roadblocks to personal power and encourage more
research into it.
The trend is intricately tied to efforts to deregulate the power utility industry
in states across the nation.
With all its benefits, personal power isn't soaring nearly as fast as it could.
That's because some utilities are making it tough for companies -- and
eventually homes -- to switch to personal power systems, said Tony Prophet,
president of Allied Power Systems Inc.
Utilities "have the motive, the means and the opportunity to block this
technology," Prophet told the Senate Energy Committee. "And it's happening
right before your eyes."
Distributed power would deprive utilities of customers and, because nearly
all purchasers of the new systems want to remain connected to the utility grid
for backup power, some big power companies are using that connection as
an excuse to stall the hookup of personal power systems, Prophet said.
But it costs money to have power available at a moment's notice, said
Edison Electric's Linderman.
"There are some legitimate technical issues and there are some illegitimate
technical issues," Linderman said. But in the end, utilities will have to
acknowledge that personal power is coming. |
