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Technology Stocks : Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (1283)	11/2/1997 7:57:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Respond to of 5827

Sid, I use an inverter on a boat to power four computers. It is very reliable. I can unplug shorepower and it automatically switches to battery source and the computers do not flicker. It creates a modified sine wave. One would probably have to match the grid sine wave to reverse feed the juice. I am sure it can be done. The 1000 watt continuous rated inverter I use lists for $1000 but you can find it discounted for $700. It includes a battery charger. For the stated application one would not need the battery charging aspect as the grid is the storage device. Is a small automotive fuel cell competitive with a centralized large scale fuel cell for electric grid generation? I would think that there are economies of scale for the larger installation.

To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (1283)	11/3/1997 1:13:00 AM
From: Michael Winkler	Respond to of 5827

Much of the technical information about our fuel cells is proprietary. We have not yet filed for patents, but we would if we were going to license our technology for commercial production. At that time we would have to determine whether we are infringing on any Ballard patents. Our general construction is similar to Ballard's, but except for the membranes we have developed the technology ourselves. We initially developed the technology with assistance from Texas A&M. We originally used a membrane from Dupont. We are now using a membrane from W.L Gore(Gore-Tex) which has much better performance than the Dupont membrane. Based on publicly available information on Ballard, with improvements that we are making in latest version of our fuel cell, our energy density and overall performance will be comparable to theirs. A synchronous inverter(an inverter that can feed power into the electric grid) that I have for my home solar electric system is 4 kw and cost $2500. The cost per kw would have to be greatly reduced to make this cost effective for feeding the output of a fuel cell car into the electric grid. I do think that such cost reductions are feasible, but would take significant technical development and much higher production volumes.