Hydrogen Fuel Cell Micro CHP – Soon to become a reality?
The future significance of Micro CHP in meeting our energy demands may be set to increase, as Ceres Power promises to provide new CHP products on the market by 2012 which may have the potential to halve CO2 output from the average home.
Such CO2 savings are possible, due to use of ‘Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology’. The technology, which uses a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) is 80% efficient, and generates heat and electricity with the only by-product being H2O, thus there is a huge potential to reduce CO2 and achieve the elusive Carbon Zero home.
Ceres Power have been developing the technology for some time, as last September they successfully built a 1Kw fuel cell module as part of its contract with British Gas to provide a residential unit by 2011.
Another aspect has been the use of fuel cells in unison with traditional boilers, in what has been termed as, ‘Intermediate solid oxide fuel cell technology’ allowing a smaller, lighter unit as it can operate at much lower temperatures of around 600 degrees.
Calor is expecting the price for this product will be at around £5-6500 which is about £2,000 more than a condensing boiler; which if combined with a government subsidy, would result in parity with less environmentally friendly rivals.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
So is it a PEM or an SOFC? This article is rather confused! To the best of my knowledge, Ceres produce an intermediate temperature SOFC which operates at a lower temperature than conventional SOFC, which is claimed to deliver benefits in terms of modulating output. However it also has penalties in terms of overall efficiency and typically achieves around 10% lower electrical efficiency that competing SOFC like CFCL. PEM units operate at even lower temperatures, provide more flexibility but suffer from very low electrical and overall efficiencies.
All of these technlogies provide significant environmental benefits compared with gas boilers and can achieve substantial energy cost savings for a typical home.
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