Achievement of this system innovation has been enabled by the compact, lightweight 1kW Ceres fuel cell stack, announced in March 2006, which is the undamental building block of Ceres' micropower generation products.

Under the contract with British Gas, Ceres is designing, building and evaluatingfuel cell CHP units capable of delivering electricity, heating and hot water forthe home, substantially reducing domestic energy costs and CO2 emissions. Today's announcement represents the achievement of a major objective under the programme, and progresses plans with British Gas to introduce Ceres' fuel cells into UK homes.

As well as size and weight, a key factor for mass market take-up is production cost. Ceres anticipates an attractive bill of materials cost for the entire system, based on the Company's evaluation of key system components including control electronics, air and fuel delivery hardware, in its test facility.  By virtue of its unique technology operating at lower temperatures, Ceres is able to use standard, low cost materials for its fuel cell and balance of plant.

Peter Bance, CEO of Ceres Power, comments:

"We are very pleased with the rapid progress made in this joint programme with British Gas, indicating that our technology is able to meet the requirements ofthe mass market.  In particular, the fact that our system design is similar in size to conventional wall-mounted boilers is a significant differentiator, making our product highly applicable not just to the UK market, but to other key geographies such as Europe and Japan."