Hey MistroCheck out CFU's Website & their "what is a fuel cell"...

Hey Mistro

Check out CFU's Website & their "what is a fuel cell" PDF

I just reread this bit in the article....

"The plan is to create a network of such plants providing up to 325MW over a 15-year period, which could connect to neighbouring buildings and the entire CBD."

and this

"Jones, who took the English city of Woking off the grid and implemented similar plans for London, is now the council's chief development officer for energy and climate change. He says there are numerous advantages to the plan. It will cut emissions by about 70 per cent, reduce and possibly eliminate the need for new coal-fired baseload generators and eliminate losses from transmission."


15 year plan and already done the same elsewhere cutting emissions 70%............. Long term project will help prove the concept/drive acceptance of distributed energy production but as the guy running it has had 70% reductions with known tech (gas fired turbines using waste heat) he'll be doing the same again here.......... so it's only tangentially important for CFU....... admittedly on the same tangent but no direct implications IMHO.


I'm sure its encouraging to see gas fired turbines in basements that use waste heat for water and space heating.
But just on CFU's own info the gain in efficiency from gas fired turbine to Fuel cell appears to me to be less than significant.. I'm looking at CFU's PDF on "what is a fuel cell" where it has nice graphics on the relative efficiencies of various energy production modes...
Hey I like the technology..... of CFU's fuel cells..... I wish I had one.... &....... we all had one....... but I see from this article (and my interpretation of the PDF above) that it'll be gas fired turbines in the basements of buildings as a first evolutionary step...... then at some later date distributed fuel cells to the retail/domestic/suburban market... Just my opinion but surely the market is in the northern hemisphere where there is a near constant need for heating..

Incidentally I understand that the same northern hemisphere cold conditions drive the electic motor vehicle specification requirements, ie they need big batteries in cold climes (EU USA Japan) but in OZ (& SEAsia S.America & Africa) we could get away with a fraction of the battery bank due to higher ambient/operating temperatures........... in short we could have electric cars on current technologies at and south of the equator..... but it's about economics/economies of scale....

A little bit of this reality applies to CFU... great tech...... world beating tech....... just not a huge leap on what a gas fired turbine utilising waste heat achieves (cost to payback aka economically speaking) for industrial/commercial scale operations..

I want it to win........ as I wrote....... I want my own bluegen........ but I just think it's gotta be picked up by a snowed in municipality with reticulated gas.............. which is most of the first world just incidentally.......... now if proof of concept is established and widely known before capital works budgets are commited to more of the same centralised production....... well... good luck to holders it's a great product..