Hawkeye: Once again, I have to disagree with you on most points. "the markets BLD is going after including premium power, remote power and back-up power, all of it off-grid, quite different from ERC..." Not entirely true. ERC will be going after what you call premium power and remote power, with a product that is cleaner and more efficient than Ballard. ERC isn't going after back-up power partially because it takes a while to warm up a molten carbonate fuel cell, as you suggest, but mainly because that market won't be viable economically for years, if ever. Think about it--how many users will pay $3000 per kW or more for power capacity that they will rarely use? It is hard to imagine anyone doing that. It isn't even clear how large the market is for primary power at that price level, and Ballard is unlikely to be able to sell a product much cheaper than that, given that its reformer alone probably will cost $1000 per kW.
As to your technical point, PEM cells may start up quickly if they are being fed hydrogen at room temperature, but if they are using a reformer, as Ballard plans to use for its stationary power plants, it takes quite some time for the reformer to heat up to 1800 F and start the process of providing hydrogen for the PEM cell. So a PEM cell isn't a whole lot more useful for backup power than a molten carbonate, even if some wealthy lunatics could be found to buy them for that purpose. So you can't claim that Ballard will be successful selling a relatively inefficient fuel cell because it will be aiming at markets that ERC can't address, because such a market doesn't exist, at least as far as stationary power goes.
"Seems to me that ERC just demo'd a 250kw fuel cell for the first time this week. As I remember, BLD had their's working back in Sept." Actually, ERC demo'd its first 250 kW stack many years ago. Two years ago it demo'd a 2 MW plant consisting of eight 250 kW stacks. ERC is far ahead of Ballard in operating experience in stationary power, as is UTX's International Fuel Cells. As the numbers in today's news release show, ERC's product's performance blows away Ballard's and, given the inherent and fundamental disadvantages of PEM for stationary power, I don't see how Ballard can catch up. This bears on the issue of whether Ballard has any chance to have operational black ink before 2007 or so.
As to Iceland, it may well be that geothermal could produce hydrogen cheaply enough that a hydrogen powered fuel cell might make economic sense there. As soon as you talk about exporting the stuff, there goes the economics. To be transported in volume, hydrogen must be cooled down close to absolute zero and kept there. That process consumes a lot of energy, which is the main reason why hydrogen is so expensive everywhere except right at the hydrogen plant. But the Iceland news is a small positive for Ballard--who knows, someday it may sell a few units there.
I do get The Economist but have been remiss in my reading. If I see something in that article that will explain why people will prefer to buy Ballard's relatively inefficient fuel cells rather than ERC's efficient ones, I'll be sure to let you know. |
