Mr Bones,
Care to speculate on the niches?
I don't want to pretend to be an expert on this topic, as I am not. However, the niches I see for a residential fuel cell in the next decade are:
1) As a luxury item for anyone with money to burn who lives in an area where power disruption is a frequent occurrence. How frequent people will tolerate depends upon how much "extra" money you have. This could include foreign markets as well.
2) Rural areas where natural gas is readily available, either by pipeline or truck.
As for businesses, natural gas turbines are still a cheaper way to go. If a given business cannot tolerate the noise from a turbine, then a fuel cell would be an option.
As you pointed out, less-developed countries without an existing infrastructure could be another market, but fuel cells are going to be a very expensive way to go.
As for environmentalist wackos, we need more of them in this world. If folks selling the Microgen can convince people this is really a cleaner, more efficient way to go, then people like yourself would be likely customers, as well. It would make the person buying and using the unit feel good. Truth is, 38% efficiency is very good, but not great. The newest generation of natural gas turbines are surpassing 60% efficiency (that's excellent even with power lost in the lines) and have control technology available to them to produce emissions on par with, or even lower than, fuel cells, and those miniscule emissions are not in your backyard.
If utilities think they can make money placing these in their customers homes, rather than keeping them connected to the grid, then the market for fuel cells could be very big. I just do not understand this line of thinking (but remember, I do not profess to be an expert). We will probably never see 100% penetration in any given utility market. Therefore, the entire utility infrastructure for power distribution must be maintained, at a significant cost. It does not make sense to me that the utility would also pay for an additional "mini" infrastructure, unique to each fuel cell user. Rather than placing thousands of individual fuel cells in users homes, just buy one clean, ultra-efficient natural gas turbine, connect it to the existing utility infrastructure, and be done with it. No need, in this case, to pay for servicing thousands of units at thousands of locations. Service one turbine at one location.
Others on this board have mentioned a 20% ROI for the utility. If that is true, and that is better than the utilities can do otherwise, and if Plug Power can make a profit under that plan, the residential fuel cell (Microgen or other) will make it big. Personally, I don't think we are there yet. Only time will tell.
Best luck to you,
Erik (IMHO)
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