Global Thermoelectric - SOFC Fuel cells (GLE:TSE) Message Board

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Gold/Mining/Energy : Global Thermoelectric - SOFC Fuel cells (GLE:TSE)

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To: Murray Nightingale who wrote (1020)	4/20/1999 12:26:00 AM
From: John Fairchild	Read Replies (2) of 6016

Hi guys, Some really good posts happening here. Murray, Chief, Chips and others been enjoying your rational approach to this company. We of course are all here to make money and in my opinion that will happen in spades. When, can't say. As you may know I work at the Ontario's IMO. Generation and power system security is my business. I spent many years working in the field at generating stations and made the moved to Ontario's System Control Center 12 years ago. Bought and sold energy on the interconnection for much of that time. One thing I can tell you for sure is that generation is dispatched according to cost. Pollution is a very big part of that cost. Big deals are being made. The rush is on for installing capacity. Price swings on the energy market have reached levels no one would have ever dreamed of a few years ago. Darlington cost something like $11 billion to build. Hydroelectric energy has been pretty close too fully utilized and citizenship and environmental constraints are gradually limiting their flexibility of operation. Fossil is dirty no matter how much technology you put into emission control. Emission controls and use of low sulfur coal have big impact on capacity. The boiler efficiency of these big units is very low in the 30% to 40% range. Nuc is under all kinds of pressure both here and in the states. The majority of the Nuc units on the system today were all built around the same time in the early 70's to address the oil crisis. They are rapidly reaching their retirement age and I do not think you will see another Nuc built in North America because they are extremely expensive due to today's safety standards. As you are probably all aware the electricity market is moving towards deregulation. Open market access. There are a ton of brokers spending a fortune to gear up. I use to deal with these guys and it was a hoot cause they did not know the business. Their mandate was/is to get their foot in the door and make some deals even if it they lost money they were willing to spend millions to gain a presence in the market. I am talking past tense because I am non-commercial entity now as a security co-ordinator for the province. the security co-ordinators in North America share information which is of a commercial nature but is required knowledge to insure that the lights stay on, the power grid does not know bounders. It is a rapidly evolving industry. I am probably telling you guy's way more than you wanted to know but I wanted to stress that I am in the industry and I do see the direction we are moving in. If a generator can be built that provides 65% efficiency and is non-polluting and without environmental impact (spent fuel storage, peaking and ponding hydraulic operations, acid gas emission, NO2 emission) then it will be developed and built. It will become the standard. Right now fossil units operate at a maximum design temperature of 600'C. This is a barrier because heat transfer (boiler tubes) do not tolerate temperatures much above this (they deform). But metals certainly exist that will tolerate much higher temperature. Nuc units use very expensive parts to take care of reactivity concerns over long periods of time. Our CANDU design operates at 300'C. Boiler efficiency however increases as operating temperature and pressures are increased. From what I have read the fuel cell that GLE is using has higher efficiencies as the operating temperature is increased. So my belief is they will eventually want to build them to capture the best efficiencies possible when the energy costs justifies the added cost of production for the materials that will tolerate those operating temperatures. Obviously technology plays a large role in the short term such as a design that minimizes the higher cost materials or new materials suited to the higher temperatures. Regardless of any future breakthrough in material or design the energy cost which includes what we call social cost adders (pollution) will justify the construction of the most efficient resource possible. In the mean time their goal appears to be maintaining good efficiency at low enough temperatures to meet a lower economic standard of construction. It would appear that they have meet with enough success to gain the interest of this big automotive company. The market does like that because they can relate to Ballard. What they seem to have a hard time grasping though is the huge potential available in the stationary market? Some visionaries will see GLE for what it is. They probably already have. One thing I should also point out is that locational market pricing is rapidly evolving. High density areas which have cheap resources locally and do not have to transport power over constrained interfaces will pay less money for their power. Area's of high import over constrained interfaces will pay big bucks. Market driven prices to build capacity where capacity is needed. Well serviced areas subsidizing the costs to supply remote areas is rapidly going out the window. On a larger scale many states have relied on cheap power purchase from neighboring utilities I can't name them (due to the code of conduct I am bound by) but they are in trouble because they have not built their own generation capacity where they need it. It's going to be another messy summer if it gets hot. John

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