The agreement, signed in mid-March, could pave the way for the largest commercial deployment yet of fuel-cell technology in this country.

Plug Power, which is partly owned by General Electric, has sold dozens of its GenCore back-up systems, to customers in the US, Europe and other parts of the world over the last few years.

The advantages the new system offers over battery-based systems include lower life-cycle costs and improved reliability over a range of indoor and outdoor environments.

Essentially, a fuel cell is a device which converts chemical energy from a fuel such as hydrogen into electricity and heat, with water being the only waste product. It is similar to a battery in that it also produces direct-current (dc) electricity. But, unlike a battery, which is limited to the stored energy within it, a fuel cell is able to generate power as long as fuel is supplied.

Although hydrogen is the primary fuel source, the process of reforming allows for the extraction of hydrogen from widely-available fuels such as natural gas, propane or any other hydrogen-containing materials.

IST executive director Hannes Visagie tells Engineering News that, in terms of its deal with Plug Power, the company will initially distribute GenCore systems in South Africa only, but will later include other African countries to be decided on an ad hoc basis.

These would be countries where General Electric, one of Plug Power’s shareholders, does not have a presence. IST intends to approach its key customers with a view to including them in the evaluation of the GenCore units.

The system, running on three standard hydrogen cylinders, can provide back-up power for a total of eight hours, says Visagie, adding that it produces 5 kW of dc electricity. This will be sufficient to ensure the continued operation of telecontrol systems in telecommunications and power networks in the event of an outage.

“This will obviously not be be sufficient to supply electricity customers like households when a power cut occurs, but will ensure that the telecontrol systems continue to function,” says Visagie.

He states that, in the US, GenCore systems have proved to be competitive with battery-based systems from a price perspective, and IST is to investigate if they can be equally competitive in South Africa and the rest of the continent.

“In South Africa, batteries are made in very large volumes, resulting in significant economies of scale.

“But if one looks at life-cycle costs, fuel cells should be competitive even in South Africa, as the system we will be distributing is self-diagnostic and requires maintenance only once such a condition is reported by modem to the central control centre by the system.

“But our aim is to also make the initial capital cost comparable.

“IST has had a lot of experience in localising products, making the peripherals here, and I believe that, once the GenCore system has gone through the IST mill, it will be competitive.” Visagie points out that making the core of the GenCore system – which comprises a platinum-based proton exchange membrane fuel-cell stack – an expensive proposition which IST does not intend to undertake. But if it gets a large number of orders, the company will consider integrating and assembling the units in South Africa.

“Initially, we will import the systems from the US, but once we manage to negotiate supply contracts with the lar- ger customers we will consider local integration and assembly,” says Visagie.

He adds that the fuel to be used by customers in South Africa would be decided by the customers themselves and could include natural gas, LPG gas or hydrogen supplied in cylinders by companies such as Afrox.

“The use of hydrogen as a fuel also provides a cost advantage in that, if one wants to double the standby time all one needs to do is to add three more hydrogen cylinders, whereas, with a battery-based system, one would need to double the number of batteries and chargers,” he says.