Establishing Fuel Cell Markets

May 11, 2003 – Vol.8 No.7

ESTABLISHING HYDROGEN FUEL CELL MARKETS.

If hydrogen fuel cells ever replace the internal combustion engine in our cars it may take some time. It will take time for the technology to be proven and ready for the mass market. It will take time for costs to drop. It will take time and money for a refueling infrastructure to be built.

But while time is passing fuel cell companies must be exploring market opportunities and begin making sales in order to stay in business. One obvious market is in distributed generation, such as a fuel cells for home or business, even for grid tied applications. Another market has been for passenger buses. A third market may be for non-road industrial vehicle applications such as fork lifts and light vehicles like neighborhood electric vehicles or golf carts. And yet another way to build a market for fuel cells is let people buy the devices and let them determine how best they can be used.

Nuvera Fuel Cells and FIAMM S.p.A have announced they will jointly develop a 7 kilowatt hybrid battery/fuel cell power pack that can be used for materials handling vehicles such as fork lifts. The partnership will work together for the next two years to develop a product that will offer zero-emissions (important for vehicles operating indoors) as well as lower operating costs, lower capital costs over ten years, reduced maintenance. The joint product would compete not only with combustion engine vehicles but with battery electric industrial vehicles.

At the core of the new product will be Nuvera’s H2e (tm) power module. Visit Nuvera at http://www.nuvera.com/ and FIAMM at http://www.fiamm.com/.

Hydrogenics has introduced a new fuel cell model, the 10 kilowatt HyPM-LP(2) power module. The LP(2) stands for low pressure, low profile and is based on its 20 kilowatt module which uses much of the same design features. The company has been selected by General Hydrogen to supply six of these new models for that company’s efforts to market fuel cell technology for forklifts used in large distribution centers.

General Hydrogen has been marketing its Hydricity (tm) Packs to replace lead-acid batteries in forklifts as well as for distributed generation and back-up and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) applications Visit Hydrogenics at http://www.hydrogenics.com/ and General Hydrogen at http://www.generalhydrogen.com/ .

SiGen, a fuel cell developer and marketer based in Scotland, is taking another route to sell fuel cell technology. They are now offering four PEM (proton exchange membrane) models as plug-and-play products. That is, they will sell you a fuel cell power supply but you, the customer, must find a suitable use for it.

SiGen is now a distributor for Voller product line of fuel cells, a 100 watt model and one that will generate a kilowatt of electricity as long as hydrogen is supplied. Visit SiGen (formerly ReGenTech) at http://www.sigen.co.uk/ and Voller at http://www.voller-energy.com/