GM, Partners Unveil Project to Create
Self-Supporting Stationery Fuel Cell
By JEFFREY BALL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
General Motors Corp. and three suppliers will announce Tuesday a demonstration project in California using a fuel cell to provide backup power for a cellular-phone tower.
The announcement will mark GM's latest step toward the stationary fuel-cell market. The suppliers involved say they hope it also will provide lessons that they and GM can use to improve prototype fuel-cell systems to power cars and trucks.
The device to be shown Tuesday at a cellular-industry trade show in Las Vegas will use a fuel cell to provide backup electricity for cellphone towers, at lower cost than extra batteries would require and without producing the pollution that is a byproduct of diesel generators, said representatives for the three suppliers working with GM.
The suppliers are Hydrogenics Corp., Toronto; Giner Inc., Newton, Mass.; and Quantum Technologies Worldwide Inc., an Irvine, Calif., unit of Impco Technologies Inc., Cerritos, Calif.
A fuel cell takes hydrogen and combines it with oxygen from the air to produce electricity and only water as a byproduct. The hydrogen can be extracted from more readily available fuels such as methanol or gasoline, though processing those fuels would produce some pollutants.
One big impediment to the development of fuel cells has been the difficulty of getting hydrogen to the contraptions to power them. The device to be unveiled Tuesday seeks to solve that problem by producing hydrogen itself. It will use electricity from the power grid to pull hydrogen from water, using a system from Giner. Then it will store the hydrogen in tanks using a system from Quantum. Then, in the event the electricity grid fails, the device will send the hydrogen into a fuel-cell system developed by Hydrogenics and GM. That fuel-cell system will produce electricity to power the cellphone tower.
GM has a 24% stake in Hydrogenics, Mr. Rivard said. In May 2000, GM acquired a 30% stake in Giner Electrochemical Systems, the Giner unit involved in the demonstration project, said Larry Swette, a vice president for Giner. In June 2001, GM agreed to take a 20% stake in Quantum, contingent on Quantum's being spun off from parent Impco. Alan Niedzwiecki, Quantum's executive director for business development, said the spinoff should take place "probably in the next few months."
Pierre Rivard, chief executive of Hydrogenics, said the fuel-cell device to be unveiled Tuesday could be a solution as cellphone towers require increasing electricity to relay not just voice communications, but also more sophisticated kinds of data. He wouldn't identify the customer whose tower will be used for the demonstration, but he said it will be in California, and that the demonstration is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2002.
GM views the stationary market as the first likely application for fuel cells. The auto maker believes it can make money in that market -- for instance, by providing these backup power-generation devices to wireless companies -- and that it can use the lessons it learns in the stationary market to test technology that ultimately could be used to power vehicles.
So Tuesday's announcement marks the latest move in a race among auto makers to prepare to roll out fuel-cell powered cars and trucks. Most of the world's major auto makers have said they plan to begin selling small numbers of fuel-cell powered vehicles within the next couple years, and to roll out larger numbers by the end of the decade. Fuel-cell powered vehicles are viewed as the best long-term way to reduce the vehicles' emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that is believed to contribute to global warming and that is produced when fuel burns inside an internal-combustion engine. But fuel cells remain prohibitively expensive.
Hydrogenics' Mr. Rivard says the machine to be announced Tuesday produces 25 kilowatts of electricity, about one-quarter the power needed for automotive applications. But, he added: "Our plan is to move very rapidly to automotive grade."
Hydrogenics shares slid 17 cents, or 3.4%, to $4.89 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq Stock Market trading Monday. Meanwhile, Impco shares fell 64 cents, or 3.7%, to $16.58, also on Nasdaq. |
