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

To: Thomas Stewart who wrote (2715)	6/6/1998 9:15:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5827

Thomas: If the future of fuel cells turns out to be very small ones (3-10 kW, the size you might want to have in your basement to supply just your house) then I'm not sure whether or not I would want a molten carbonate box running at 1300 degrees F. It might depend on whether or not it is winter, when the heat could be used. Despite some publicity in the past year about this concept (most recently in the current issue of Popular Science) there is considerable question whether it will ever fly. There are a number of components in a complete fuel cell system whose cost is not linear with size, i.e., they won't cost a whole lot less in a small fuel cells than they will in big ones, probably making the resulting product excessively expensive on a per kW basis. Secondly, the energy needs of a household vary widely over the course of the day. To handle your needs on a hot summer afternoon would require a fuel cell way too big for your needs in the middle of a temperate night. You will have to pay a lot for some equipment that will sit idle most of the time; it won't make sense for most people. You might want to own a small one and use a battery for a buffer, but the efficiency loss will add to operating cost. I think that the idea of using a fuel cell powered car to provide power for the house is a delightful fantasy but one that is unlikely to happen for the next few decades anyway. Fuel cells for cars are only expected to operate at most a few hours a day, and won't stand up to the thousands of hours of annual use your house would put them under. Check with Ballard and you'll see that the design of their stationary power unit is quite different from the automotive unit for that reason. So if the economics of fuel cells favor larger sizes, to be purchased by gas and electric utilities and large users, which may include small communities or groups of houses, then the economics would also favor fuel cells that have higher efficiency, not Ballard's low efficiency ones.