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

To: billkirn who wrote (2737)	6/10/1998 4:37:00 PM
From: David E. Smith	Respond to of 5827

ADL's POX Reformer won Discover Magazine's 1998 Discover award. July 1998 hardcopy issue (p103)(Transportation). The current online issue only makes brief mention of this award. The hardcopy issue has 5 paragraphs of subjective comments. Probably good PR but nothing really new, technically. I'm not certain that it's worth purchasing the mag. Jeff Bentley is the developer and COO of Epyx, ADL's spin-off company. System uses ethanol, methanol or gasoline. Says that FCsmust get a lot cheaper if they are to have a chance of pushing the ICE off the road. If memory serves me correctly they used a Ballard and a Plug Power FC in powering 2 vehicles.

To: billkirn who wrote (2737)	6/10/1998 4:57:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	Respond to of 5827

Bill: At Santa Clara ERC's fuel cell was damaged by a short circuit caused by some bad glue used to hold on the insulation, which carbonized and started conducting electricity where it shouldn't have. That occurred after, as I said, many weeks of pumping over a MW into the town's grid with no problems whatsoever. The fuel cell was damaged first, then it stopped working right. If the glue hadn't been bad, the fuel cell wouldn't have been damaged. Bad glue on exterior insulation doesn't imply anything wrong with the fuel cell itself. If the NECAR 2 had a tire that blew, knocking the vehicle into a ditch, would you say that Ballard's fuel cell was no good because the car stopped running? This is the whole point of demonstrations of complex technology, to find out what may go wrong. Perhaps Ballard has the world's smartest engineers who know how to design something perfectly on the first go round, but I will guess that there will be unexpected problems with its stationary power units that it will have to adjust or redesign. ERC has accumulated tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of hours of operating experience with its units. It is not clear that Ballard has even a few thousand hours with its units (or should I say unit? Has it built more than one yet?)