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

To: Dr. Harvey who wrote (2850)	6/27/1998 4:40:00 PM
From: Urlman	Respond to of 5827

New York Times: Fuel cells move closer to being an energy choice AÿAÿAÿ For the first time, an energy technology called a fuel cell will supply all the power to a suburban house, another sign that fuel cells are on the verge of acceptance as an economical alternative to traditional energy sources. The idea of fuel cells - which convert liquid fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction rather than combustion - has been around more than 100 years. But until recently, fuel cells were so expensive that it was practical only for NASA's specialized use on space missions. But the cells being tested now are powerful, flexible and reliable enough to work as an affordable earth-bound energy source. Last week, a team of engineers cut off the electricity the local utility company provides to a brick ranch-style house in Latham, N.Y., and switched on a back-porch component that looks more like a home central air-conditioning unit than the small chemical plant it really is. Developments in the past few weeks include the first commercial sale of a fuel cell for remote power (to the New Jersey Department of Transportation, for a traffic warning sign) and the first street-ready car powered by a fuel cell (built by students at Humboldt State University in California). And in April, Ford put $ 420 million into Ballard Power Systems, a fuel cell company in Vancouver, British Columbia, in which Daimler-Benz has a major investment. Officials at the Energy Department, which is helping to pay for the test in Latham, say they have high hopes that within a few years thousands of homes will be drawing electric power from fuel cells powered by natural gas or propane, cutting pollution and consuming less fuel than conventional energy production. "In the last year, we've seen significant breakthroughs," said Energy Secretary Federico Pena. "We're going to see fuel cells in homes, cars and other uses much sooner than we had predicted." Still too expensive What has made fuel cells more practical has been improvements in the gossamer-thin components, which look like plastic food wrap or aluminum foil, that are used to turn a basic chemical reaction - the combination of oxygen and hydrogen to make water - into the basis of an energy revolution. The heart of the fuel cell being used in house in Latham and being studied for use in automobiles is called a proton-exchange membrane. When a hydrogen atom - one proton and one electron - is pressed against that membrane, the proton passes through and the electron is left behind. That creates a positive charge on one side of the membrane and a negative charge on the other; wire them together, and the result is a flow of electricity. But for all the breakthroughs, fuel cells are still much too expensive for everyday use. The car companies, which probably would be the biggest users of an efficient fuel cell, say that fuel cells still cost roughly 100 times more per horsepower than an internal combustion engine does. And running houses on fuel cells is substantially more expensive than relying on power from utility plants.