Fuel cell technology designed for use in homes, which could cut household carbon dioxide emissions by almost one third and significantly reduce energy bills, is being developed in the UK.
Ceres Power, which has developed Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology known as SteelCell, has announced an agreement with an unnamed manufacturer to integrate the system into its products for residential customers.
The two-year agreement, which is being supported with a £700,000 grant to Ceres Power by Innovate UK, will see the manufacturer carry out systems engineering work to integrate the core SteelCell technology into commercial products.
SteelCell technology consists of individual steel SOFCs, which can be piled on top of one another to form stacks. The stacks can then be used to provide power and heat for hot water.
One stack consisting of 100 cells can provide enough power and hot water for one home, while 100 stacks can be used for apartment blocks and businesses.
The cells are fuel-flexible, meaning they can be used now to generate power from natural gas supplies, but could ultimately convert biogas or hydrogen into electricity, according to Phil Caldwell, CEO of Ceres Power.
“So if in the future we decide to decarbonise the grid, and we started to use either biogas or hydrogen, the fuel cell technology we have can operate on anything from 100 per cent natural gas all the way through to any blend of hydrogen,” he said.
The company is already running trials of prototype domestic power systems in the UK, where it is used as an add-on to conventional gas boilers.
“I have one powering my home, it provides me with 80 per cent of my power, free hot water, and part of my heating,” said Caldwell. “I buy gas at 4p per kilowatt hour, and the fuel cell converts it at around 50 per cent [efficiency], so essentially my electricity is costing me 8p per kilowatt hour, instead of 17p per kilowatt hour if I was buying it from the grid,” he said.
That would amount to energy bill savings of £300 to £400 per year for an average UK home, he said.
The improved efficiency of the technology in converting gas to power and heat also means the carbon footprint of the average home would be reduced by 25-30 per cent, even with natural gas as the fuel source, he added.
In December Ceres Power announced an agreement with another manufacturer to develop its technology for commercial building applications. The company is also working with Nissan to investigate the technology’s use as a range extender for electric vehicles, and with the US Department of Energy for powering data centres.
What a wonderful idea, but how long before it is available to retro-fit to houses at a reasonable cost? I looked into having solar panels fitted to my property, but it just is (now) not economically worth it. It also seems that boiler replacement incentive has quietly gone away, I hope this will not go down the same path.
Way back in pre-history, (well the 1960s actually), when I was considering possible topics for post-graduate research, fuel cells were suggested but I did not take this up. Their promise was always great, but always a long way off. Maybe we will see MHDbased generation also taking off.
Hopefully, this development will prove successful and make micro-generation technically and economically feasible. In the winter they could offer efficient CHP and in the summer pure efficient electricity generation. A big improvement on the heavily-subsidised solar cell white elephants that produce expensive power when it is not needed and are off when it is a bit dark / cold.
This is great news, just imagine lowering your gas and electric bills, running your electric car, just top up with Hydrogen when you need to.
That is the future, bring it on, it should be for everyone.
You can watch a video about it here, courtesy of Robert Llewellyn
https://youtu.be/PCs9OOHP-0o
Why does it only provide “part of your heating”?
If you generated all of your central heating and hot water from the system, you would have a surplus of electricity. Why not feed that into the grid?
I don’t know the cost of the system, nor the cost of an inverter, but if you can keep that down to a few pence per kwh, you could be paid, say 5p gross per kwh that would hopefully leave you 3p net. (So the heat has only cost you 1p, because you paid 5p for the gas and got heat + 3p net for the electricity)
Although the electricity is not zero carbon, it is greener than a normal PowerStation, because it has come from micro CHP (combined heat and power).
So if everyone did it, the cost of heating and electricity plus the nation’s carbon foot print would all come down.
Provided of course, the system doesn’t cost too much.
I’ve always though we should use tiny diesel engines for CHP. They can also run on any fuel and generate both heat and power.
So the fuel cell needs to be cheaper than a small diesel engine.
I think the idea is that the system is essentially scaled to meet most of the thermal load rather than all of the thermal load to keep the cost down. When there is a greater thermal load than the fuel cell system can provide their is an afterburner that kicks in and the system effectively just works like a regular boiler. To meet all the thermal load you would have to have a massive, expensive system that you would probably only use for a few days of the year.
In terms of why you go with a fuel cell rather than a gen set. It is largely down to the ratio of heat to power. Engines this size are typically only 15-20% efficient that causes a problem in the summer when your heating load is insignificant compared to you electrical. A fuel cell is around 40-50% efficient giving much more power and a lot less heat. That is critical when justifying the additional cost of a CHP system vs a conventional boiler as the power is the more valuable output.
My personal opinion is that these systems should not respond to the house load but be controlled centrally. The home owner should program their hot water / heating system as normal but the grid should decide when to turn on the fuel cell system. As a user, I just want hot water in the evening and morning I don’t care when that water is heated so the grid can turn on my fuel cell when it needs the power in a 12 hour window. For that to make sense there would have to be a FIT for the fuel cell. Every house in the UK has a 7 KWh battery in it called a hot water tank we should really be smarter with how we use it.
If gas costs 4p per kW and we convert to heat and electricity with the fuel cell why are we not converting all gas boilers including municipal and get rid of the big gas stations that waste 50pct of the spend on heating the atmosphere? Also solves the grid problem for electric cars.
Try looking at solar PV roof panels and a Tesla Powerwall battery. They do make sense, and you have to work out the payback of course.