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Technology Stocks : FCL - FuelCell Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Winkler who wrote (125)	12/24/1997 9:18:00 AM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 407

Michael: One of the problems with the household size fuel cell concept, such as Plug Power, is that the energy needs of a home vary widely, perhaps by a factor of five or even ten if air conditioners are running on a hot, humid day, compared to needs in the middle of the night. So a home would have to buy capacity well above its average needs. As it stands now, the reason why fuel cells are not yet a commercial reality is that the positive of high efficieny is overcome by the negative of excessive capital cost. The focus of every fuel cell maker is to bring down the capital cost, but even at the base utility level, where there would be no wasted capacity, fuel cells are still, at the moment, too expensive. So if it is still a few years before they make economic sense in large sizes, I would think that it might be quite a number of years beyond that before it will make sense for a household to buy much more capacity than they normally need, just to handle peaks in demand. Also, if I am not mistaken, there are other components in a complete system whose cost will not be very low, just because the fuel cell is only producing 10 kW or so. I am thinking of the inverter to create AC power and the various control systems. All in all, wouldn't you think that (not counting remote locations) household size fuel cells would probably not be successful until some number of years after larger scale ones make sense?