It couldn't get any more compelling that Sid works for ERC,
To: billkirn (2737 )
From: Sid Turtlman
Wednesday, Jun 10 1998 4:57PM ET
Reply # of 3868
Bill: At Santa Clara ERC's fuel cell was damaged by a short
circuit caused by some bad glue used to hold on the insulation,
which carbonized and started conducting electricity where it
shouldn't have. That occurred after, as I said, many weeks of
pumping over a MW into the town's grid with no problems
whatsoever. The fuel cell was damaged first, then it stopped
working right. If the glue hadn't been bad, the fuel cell wouldn't
have been damaged. Bad glue on exterior insulation doesn't imply
anything wrong with the fuel cell itself. If the NECAR 2 had a tire
that blew, knocking the vehicle into a ditch, would you say that
Ballard's fuel cell was no good because the car stopped running?
This is the whole point of demonstrations of complex technology,
to find out what may go wrong. Perhaps Ballard has the world's
smartest engineers who know how to design something perfectly
on the first go round, but I will guess that there will be unexpected
problems with its stationary power units that it will have to adjust
or redesign. ERC has accumulated tens of thousands, probably
hundreds of thousands of hours of operating experience with its
units. It is not clear that Ballard has even a few thousand hours
with its units (or should I say unit? Has it built more than one yet?)
|
