UTC Power to launch fuel cell that is "cheaper than the grid"

UTC Power, the fuel cell division of engineering conglomerate United Technologies, is poised to launch a phosphoric acid fuel cell system for commercial properties that it claims will deliver power at a lower cost than the grid.

The company claims that improvements to the electrolyte stack have doubled its life expectancy to ten years slashing maintenance costs, while design changes to enable mass production of the unit have also lowered production costs.

The net result, according to UTC Power president Jan van Dokkum, is a new fixed-location combined heat and power fuel cell that costs the same as previous versions - around $1m to buy and install - but delivers 400KW as opposed to 200KW of energy and lasts twice as long.

The company's calculations claim that the improvements allow it to generate electricity that costs 12 cents per kw/h, making it competitive with power from the grid costing between eight and 19 cents per kw/h in the US.

"This system is cheaper than the grid for between 40 and 60 per cent of energy intensive buildings with a high level of demand for power and heat," said Van Dokkum. "The number one candidates will be supermarkets, hotels, datacentres, hospitals, and manufacturing plants with high heat demands."

The system runs on natural gas and does result in carbon emissions, however UTC Power maintains that a very high electricity conversion efficiency of the fuel cell and improvements in capturing waste heat mean that 90 per cent of the energy going into the system is used, compared to an efficiency of around 32 per cent for the US grid. The result is a reduction in carbon emissions of around 50 per cent for the same level of power generation.

Van Dokkum said that should supplies of hydrogen become more plentiful the cell could be easily adapted to run without any emissions. "We've seen a lot of interest from customers about hydrogen and we could make the changes fairly simply" he explained.

He added that the company was now in talks with several firms about installing the technology and was poised for a formal launch early in the second quarter of the year.

"It will mark the first time we have a truly commercial solution," he said. "In the past most fuel cell installations have been demonstration projects where it is hard to make the financials work, but this is a genuinely commercially viable technology… We are now aiming to manufacture 250 fuel cells a year over the next three years using a manufacturing model that can be replicated across multiple sites."