Monday 6 April 2009

CFCL in trouble again!

What is it with CFCL? They clearly have the best fuel cell technology for micro CHP by a very long way. Thay have demonstrated electrical efficiencies way beyond what anybody else has come near to; 70% from primary fuel, making it significantly better than the best central plant efficiency ever seen. At that rate you could chuck away the heat and still be head and shoulders above CCGT! But of course they still have the heat to play with so overall efficiencies of > 90% are more than possible; that is what makes micro CHP such a winner compared with centralised electricity generation.
Of course fuel cells tend to degrade over time so you would be equally astonished that CFCL have managed to achieve better than 2% per 1000 hours in a packaged unit and better than 1% in a laboratory unit, so they can expect to achieve well in excess of 10 years real life and rumours have it that they have devised a cunning plan to maintain total efficiency at 100% throughout the entire life of the unit!
No-one else comes near, not Kyocera, nor Ceres, but then it is almost like fate has it in for them. First they get stung by the Icelandic banks for their capital, manage to recover with new investors filling the funding gap, then NUON (their Dutch partner) get taken over by Vattenfall (who clearly don't give a damn for New Energy) decide to dump the partnership because "it is not core". Bummer!
Still there are many others out there who will no doubt see the opportunity, though sad that CFCL have to waste so much time to demonstrate the blindingly obvious that they are well ahead of the pack!