To start with I had a long walk around all the stands to see which old friends and new faces I could spot. One of the pleasures of this event is the number of people that come straight over and say hello. Even when it is obvious that you are not there to buy anything information flows freely. Interestingly one of the first impressions during this walk was of the growth in numbers of universities exhibiting.

My first company port of a call was H2Logic. We often mention this companies activities in our Niche Market surveys and more recently through their press releases on a planned hydrogen community. On the stand H2Logic had one of their funky little delivery vans, of which they have already sold 6, on show. The fuel cell unit is neatly packed away under the drivers seat leaving a large space in the back for whatever type of storage the customer requires – the example on show had a refrigerator unit on board full of chocolate cakes! When I asked about costs, something that only two years ago would be have been something of a taboo subject for many companies, I was given a price list. Not only does it list the price of the core H2Truck (46,000 euros) and hydrogen refuelling station (28,750 euros) but also a number of add-ons. This confidence certainly goes a long way in promoting this company!

After heading over to the Italian Island I bumped in another contact. Hank Teh is well known for his involvement with the H2 Expo in Japan. This expo is also telling a story of growth (from 2 up to 3 halls in 2007) and has also an increasing number of participants, with companies such as Polyfuel and Cabot new next year.

Italy this year has increased its presence significantly. Its “Italian Island” contains a number of small and medium sized Italian companies. I had the pleasure of a conversation with Dr Prosini from ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment) on his research into hydrogen storage. His team is looking of Sodium Borohydride (NaBH4) as a potential option for a quick release hydrogen storage solution. Current work is on a 25kg cartridge with the aim to develop a full system for integration into a Light Duty Vehicle. As this research is still new, it only kicked off last year (2005) Dr Prosini is hoping to have a small prototype vehicle in the next couple of years.

Voller are another company going from strength-to-strength. The Fair sees the launch of the VE100 rack-mountable battery charger. This unit is designed to be rugged, have an extended run time and operate over a wide variety of temperatures. Seeing as we are going to publish an article on Voller and their development activity this Wednesday I won’t say anything else about them now, except that they also gave out a very clear pricing structure. The new VE100 can be bought for £3500 (approx 5000 euros) and has an order time of around 5 weeks.

After a relaxed lunch I said hello to one of the many new companies that are here for the first time. Electro Power Systems of Italy have certainly already attracted a lot of interest with their eye catching system design. The company only started in the beginning of 2005 and is based in Turin, Italy. Since then, working with a well known stack manufacturer, they have designed two separate systems. The Electro 7 is a 7 kW PEM unit that will be commercial in the Autumn of 2006 at a price of around 25,000 euros, plug-and-play. The larger Electro50, 50 kW, unit has been designed to deliberately target the growing distributed generation market. This unit will see Beta testing at the start of 2007 with commercial availability being targeted for the end of 2007. Interestingly although both units use PEM fuel cells the 50kW system has been designed to run off methane or bio-ethanol.

The forum programme, as usual, is well attended and has a variety of speakers. The only presentation that I caught today was that of Brendan Bilton of Ceramic Fuel Cells. Brendan was discussing the proposed route to market that Ceramic is working on. This includes in the short term the locating and construction of a large manufacturing plant, with capacity of 200,000 units per annum and the securing of a systems / appliance manufacturer. Unlike many others the Ceramic unit is designed to be 100% grid connected and will function as a micro-grid system rather than providing power for distributed generation. One final interesting statistic from Ceramic is that it only takes 15 minutes to shut-down, replace a stack, and then start-up the unit again.

The last call of the day was to Protonex, also exhibiting for the first time this year. Protonex are operating in the same space as companies such as SMART and Voller but unlike these other companies they also manufacture their own PEM stacks. This company recognised early on the power of the military dollar and is working with a large number of different military units in the USA. Alongside the military though they are also developing a commercial product and is looking at the RV, marine and mobility markets for its portable generator. In fact they say the main bottleneck at the minute for them is the lack of manufacturing capability. An interesting company to watch – in my opinion.

So Day 1 is fast closing and the evenings networking reception is starting to loom in the minds of the those who have been on their feet for a long time. I will be back tomorrow with more of the news and goings on of the Fair-PR Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Groups Exhibit.