A.J.: I'd rather have the company answer those questions. I don't have a chemistry background - I've a liberal artsy education and then a long career on Wall St., so I can only explain this stuff in terms of analogies (what else are the liberal arts for?)
In general, the process of burning a hydrocarbon requires a number of steps, all of which cost you some efficiency - creating heat, then boiling water, then making the steam turn something around in a circle, which generates the electricity. By eliminating those steps a fuel cell is a lot more efficient. Not counting any cogeneration, ERC's cells have run at the 50% efficiency level. If one were to make use of the heat (and molten carbonates do run hot) then you could get up to around 80%. Nothing else comes close, and the emissions are minuscule compared to what you get from burning fuels.
The economic problem is that energy efficiency is nice, but capital costs are important too. You might be interested in buying a car that got 75 mpg, but not if it cost you $150,000 to buy it. So that is the problem that all fuel cells face - can the capital cost be reduced enough to the point that the savings in operating expense create a good return on investment to the buyer?
I think Ballard is doomed in stationary power for a variety of reasons, one of which being that PEM fuel cells run too cold for any cogen. But the fact that Ballard will almost certainly fail doesn't mean that ERC will necessarily succeed. There is plenty of work yet to be done - at least with ERC's current tiny market cap relative to the multi-billion dollar potential market, you will get amply rewarded if it does succeed. |
