FirstEnergy to buy a 1 megawatt fuel cell
By John Funk, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Fuel cell pioneer Ballard Power Systems will put a one-million watt mobile power plant somewhere in FirstEnergy Corp.’s Ohio territory before summer, a top Ballard executive said Friday.
“We will do a one megawatt peak load demonstration project with FirstEnergy,” Ballard vice president Michael Goldstein told the more than 170 people at the 10th annual Ohio Fuel Cell Symposium at the Great Lakes Science Museum.
“The benefits are that it will be clean, low noise, have a fast response and have zero carbon emissions,” he said.
FirstEnergy Solutions, the utility’s unregulated subsidiary, will buy the mini-power plant, said company spokeswoman Ellen Raines, but has not decided where to put it.
The plant will be housed in a large trailer similar to a semi-tractor trailer and will be mobile. “We are very interested in this technology,” Raines said.
Based in British Columbia, Ballard is now growing at the rate of 35 percent annually, said Goldstein, and will soon be profitable.
Fuel cells generate electricity in an electro-chemical process that combines oxygen in the air with hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst, producing only water as a by-product. The hydrogen used in the process is coming from fossil fuels, mostly from natural gas.
FirstEnergy’s demonstration project could use industrial hydrogen or make hydrogen on the spot from natural gas, Goldstein said.
But fuel cells can be completely green, he said, if they are combined with wind turbines and a device called an “electrolyzer.” Those devices take power and splits the hydrogen from the oxygen in water.
That is exactly what a Cleveland consortium including NASA Glenn, Parker Hannifin Corp, the Great Lakes Science Museum and Connecticut-based Proton Corp. plan to do.
They plan to use the power from the museum’s wind turbine and solar panels in an electrolyzer to make hydrogen from Lake Erie water.
That hydrogen would then be the fuel for small vehicles and ultimately an RTA bus.Fuel cell consultant Paul Prokopius, a retired NASA engineer, said the project could begin with a grant of $500,000.
Federal, state and private grants have played a major role in the creation of what some say is still a fledgling industry in Ohio.
Mike McKay, manager of the state’s Technology Business Assistance Office, said Ohio has allocated more than $75 million in Third Frontier Grants since the program’s founding in 2003. Companies and universities used those grants to leverage another $171 million, he said, creating 430 jobs, mostly in research and development.
One global company based here that landed several of those grants is GrafTech International, LLC. With headquarters in Parma, the company manufacturers in nearly 100 countries, including a manufacturing plant in Lakewood.
Lionel Batty, head of GrafTech’s research and development, said he company has recently hired about 30 employees and is looking for another 30 as it beefs up its engineered products division, which includes components for fuel cells.
Another Cleveland-based company, Technology Management, Inc. has played a development role in the new technology dating back to the 1980s.
TMI president Benson Lee is now working with Lockheed-Martin, a defense contractor, to toughen up his 1,000-watt fuel cell that is about the size of a large household dehumidifier. The Defense Department wants to use the fuel cells on the battlefield in place of noisy, inefficient diesel generators. Lee’s fuel cell can make electricity from any liquid fuel.
Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition Exective Director Pat Valente said fuel cells, once considered the direct competitor for automotive engines, are probably best used for now in conjunction with other renewable technologies.
The state has attracted or helped grow a number of companies now producing limited numbers of small, niche-oriented fuel cells.
