A cheaper fuel cell could provide affordable power for microgrids

 A one-meter-square grey box decorated 
with green lights sits in an exceedingly corridor close to the laboratory of materials scientist Eric ­Wachsman, director of the Energy centre at the University of Maryland. it\'s a mockup of a fuel-cell device that runs on fossil fuel, manufacturing electricity at constant price as an outsized Dictamnus alba.

The box is meant to deal with stacks of solid-oxide fuel cells that disagree from their typical counterparts during a dramatic way: they’re projected to provide electricity for $1 per watt, down from $8 in today’s industrial versions, due to enhancements that ­Wachsman has created within the ceramic materials at their heart.

The technology may eventually become a sensible and reasonable thanks to ease strain on the progressively stressed electricity grid; anyplace there’s low cost fossil fuel, we tend to may even have constant and low cost electricity.

That would build it potential to try to to away with the diesel generators that square measure currently wide used for backup power and as a key part of microgrids in places like Malaya and cellular base stations in rural areas round the world. Solid-oxide fuel cells—which will run on fuel or hydrocarbon, not simply natural gas—use a lot of less fuel per watt than diesel generators of comparable size.

Conventional solid-oxide fuel cells run at high temperatures, creating them dearer and liable to performance losses. A key advance within the Maryland electric cell is that it\'s supported metallic element compound and atomic number 83 compound, that square measure way more electrically conductive  than materials utilized in industrial versions and manufacture rather more electricity per sq. metric linear unit. The cell will operate at 650 °C, down from 900 °C in existing merchandise, reducing thermal stresses and insulation wants. and also the final product is formed of thirty two stacks, every of which might get replaced if it fails.

The gray box mocks up a 25-kilowatt version of the technology, that is currently underneath development by a startup referred to as oxidation-reduction Power Systems. oxidation-reduction is building a manufacturing plant in Melbourne, Florida, and hopes to launch the merchandise in 2014. A 25-kilowatt electric cell is enough to power alittle strip mall; units that square measure smaller still may serve one house. within the future, the technology may even be place into hybrid vehicles to charge their batteries, since it\'s each lighter than AN internal-­combustion engine and a lot of economical at manufacturing electricity.

But the complete generators, if in, would be spectacular enough. They’d mean “we’re on par with standard power generation,” Wachsman says. “It’s not simply backup power—it’s energy security.”