Home Brewed Power, Home Fueled Vehicles

November 14, 2004 – Vol.9 No.34

HOME-BREWED POWER, HOME-FUELED VEHICLES.

The notion of a combined heat and power plant (CHP) for the home has a certain appeal: Freedom and independence from the power grid and power that isn’t subject to outages and black outs.

The dream is not without difficulty. An independent-from-the-power-grid cogenerator has to run 24/7 just in case power is needed immediately at off hours. But if power or thermal energy isn’t used it’s wasted.

There are solutions of course. The cogenerator could be a kind of hybrid with a battery back-up to supply power on demand. But a battery back-up, like that for a photovoltaic solar system, adds to cost of the system.

Another option is to NOT cut the line from the power grid. Then the independence is lost. However power could be sold back to the grid. Of course in the wee hours of the morning, few need large amounts of electricity.

An additional choice is to run the generator 24/7 and use the excess power for other purposes. Hydrogen could be generated to feed the family fuel cell car. Unused electricity could be used to recharge a battery electric vehicle and charge electric devices around the house such as cell phones and laptop computers.

Given the amount of energy a vehicle consumes every day, vehicle re-energizing seems the best use of excess home-brewed power.

That’s exactly what Honda and Plug Power have in mind with the launch of their jointly developed, experimental next-generation, Home Energy Station fuel cell cogenerator - the HES II.

The new, more compact unit operating on natural gas (or perhaps propane) will generate hydrogen, electricity and allow waste thermal energy to be put to work making domestic heat and hot water.

The launch coincided with the delivery of two Honda 2005 FCX fuel cell vehicles to the State of New York for a 12-month demonstration program. The two vehicles will be refueled by the HES II unit at Plug Power’s Latham, New York headquarters.

The vehicle demonstration is aimed at proving the viability of Honda’s new fuel cell stack that can start and operate in below freezing temperatures that are common with upstate New York’s winters.

The concept of the home fuel cell cogenerator is catching on elsewhere on the globe, too.

Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited (CFCL) of Australia has entered into an agreement with New Zealand’s Powerco to conduct trials of CFCL’s 1-kilowatt micro-CHP. Providing heat, hot water, and electricity for a home, excess electricity will be sold back to the grid in the trial program.

If energy consumption in New Zealand is anything like that in the U.S., homes would have to draw on the grid for peak demand periods. One kilowatt isn’t much power.

Visit Honda at http://www.hondanews.com/ and Plug Power at http://www.plugpower.com/ CFCL at http://www.cfcl.com.au/ Powerco at http://www.powerco.co.nz/ .