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Gold/Mining/Energy : SOFC vrs PEM Fuel Cells (Debate Forum) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GLE who wrote (1)	6/26/1999 1:44:00 PM
From: blue_chip	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 79

Excellent idea, now people will have a place to do this off the company specific threads.

To: GLE who wrote (1)	6/27/1999 1:33:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	Respond to of 79

Why did you leave off carbonate fuel cells which, for stationary power applications, are by far the most advanced? The leader is Energy Research Corp. (ERC on the A.S.E. ercc.com). ERC has been working on carbonate fuel cells for around 20 years. As long ago as 1996 it had a 2 MW demo plant running; I don't believe solid oxide has gotten beyond 150 kW, nor PEM 250 kW. ERC's carbonate fuel cells have run for many tens of thousands of hours, dwarfing the cumulative experience of all the other fuel cell makers put together, with the exception of ONSI's phosphoric acid fuel cells, which have little significant commercial future. ERC's carbonate fc's operate between PEM and solid oxide in temperature. They are high enough (around 1300 F.) that the waste heat is quite usable and, most important, they can be fed hydrocarbons such as natural gas straight out of the pipeline, without having to process the fuel through a reformer, which adds to costs and cuts efficiency. At the same time, running much cooler than solid oxide, they don't need some of the expensive alloys that the latter need to handle that heat. Also important is that ERC's carbonates are closest to commercialization. There are still a large number of technical issues for developers of PEM and solid oxide to resolve before a commercial product can be released, but all technology problems have been solved in carbonate. The only thing left for ERC is ramping up the production, which obviously has to coincide with getting orders and financing the plant expansion. But the product works fine as is, and is of a design which outside auditors estimate can be produced at costs low enough that should garner ERC a good share of the stationary power market, once production levels are high enough to get the costs to target levels. What makes it particularly intriguing for investors is that ERC's market cap is so low, at under $60 million. This is a function of its years of no or minimal cash burn, and its ability to develop its technology internally without having to give away chunks of its potential (in shares and/or partner dominated joint ventures) to high profile strategic partners. If at some point in the next year or two investors conclude that ERC is to be the first real (in terms of actual sales and earnings) leader in fuel cells, and give it the market cap in the hundreds of millions or billions accorded GLE, MKTY, and BLDP, then the stock goes into triple digits.