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To: Scoobah who wrote (1831)	7/8/1999 8:19:00 PM
From: DoubleOddBuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2513

speaking of fuel cells Steve, interesting little story : BY SETH BORENSTEIN KNIGHTRIDDER NEWS SERVICE NEW YORK -- In the heart of a city electric by nature, the Central Park police station had too little power. Antiquated lines provided so little juice to the historic 19th-century precinct house that police couldn't run electronic fingerprint machines or air-condition the whole station. Getting to the 20th century with new power lines would have cost $1.2 million. Instead, the police skipped right to the 21st century and for $1 million got their own power plant -- a clean, ultra-efficient fuel cell. Now they have enough juice to run high-tech gadgetry, charge four electric police cars and light up a nearby summer stage where the Metropolitan Opera performs. On May 1, they cut themselves off from New York's vaunted power grid. The Central Park police are pioneers in what experts see as a new era of power production. Growing numbers of businesses this summer are turning on small, economical and reliable power plants to wean themselves from utilities. Private homes will be next, with hundreds of test residential generators scheduled for installation starting next month. Plug Power LLC of Latham, N.Y., hopes to begin selling dishwasher-sized fuel cells for the home for less than $4,000 in just 18 months and sees an initial market of 25 million homes. Researchers say personal power is poised to explode into everyday life just like personal computers in 1984 and cellular phones a few years after that. These new systems provide more reliable power and cut air pollution, supporters say, because they produce power and hot water. The hot water -- which can also be used for heating and air conditioning -- makes the systems two to three times more efficient than more conventional power sources. "The era of big [central power plants] is certainly over," said Chuck Linderman, director of energy supply policy for the Edison Electric Institute, a power utility trade group. Unlike the Central Park precinct, most companies that use personal power don't cut themselves off from the electric grid. They stay connected, using the grid as a backup. Some even hope to sell excess power back to the electric companies. The utility industry is torn by all this. Some companies are putting up roadblocks because they envision lost customers. The Clinton administration has proposed a bill, still pending on Capitol Hill, that would remove some roadblocks to personal power and encourage more research into it. The trend is intricately tied to efforts to deregulate the power utility industry in states across the nation. With all its benefits, personal power isn't soaring nearly as fast as it could. That's because some utilities are making it tough for companies -- and eventually homes -- to switch to personal power systems, said Tony Prophet, president of Allied Power Systems Inc. Utilities "have the motive, the means and the opportunity to block this technology," Prophet told the Senate Energy Committee. "And it's happening right before your eyes." Distributed power would deprive utilities of customers and, because nearly all purchasers of the new systems want to remain connected to the utility grid for backup power, some big power companies are using that connection as an excuse to stall the hookup of personal power systems, Prophet said. But it costs money to have power available at a moment's notice, said Edison Electric's Linderman. "There are some legitimate technical issues and there are some illegitimate technical issues," Linderman said. But in the end, utilities will have to acknowledge that personal power is coming.