Ceramic Fuel Cells said on Wednesday it had secured the first big order for its energy efficient fuel cells, and a source close to the situation said it expects similar orders in the next 12 months.
Shares in Ceramic rose 10 percent to 21p after it announced the five-year deal with Dutch energy firm and utility partner Nuon, worth between 75-100 million pounds ($147-197 million).
The deal means boilers containing its fuel cell units will start appearing in Dutch homes towards the end of 2009.
The units, called stacks, turn domestic gas boilers into mini power-stations, using gas that is already going into the boiler to produce electricity that is fed back into the grid.
Boilers containing the company's stacks could be fitted in British homes from late 2009 or 2010 if utility Powergen, already a partner of Ceramic, orders units this year, analyst Nick Walker at broker Liberum Capital said.
Nuon will order 50,000 stacks for delivery from June 2009, providing Ceramic meets performance targets.
"This is fantastic news," said analyst John-Marc Bunce at broker Nomura Code. "If Ceramic gets commitments from two or three utilities in the next 12 months it would support an 80p price target."
The fuel cell units will be priced at between 1,500 and 2,000 pounds apiece, a person familiar with the deal said, and will be used in boilers priced at over 3,000 pounds and owned by the power utilities.
The order should generate "substantial revenue" for Ceramic Fuel over the five-year period, the company said.
Utilities will save so much money by producing electricity in people's homes, which is twice as efficient as producing it in big power stations and sending it through the grid, that analysts expect they will give the next-generation boilers to customers for free.
The boilers will have a four to five-year payback for the utilities, Walker at Liberum Capital said.
Before Wednesday, loss-making Ceramic Fuel had only received orders for prototypes of its fuel cell units, although rival Ceres got an order for 37,500 units from British Gas owner Centrica in January, for delivery from 2011.
"This massively trumps Ceres Power's deal with Centrica. It's bigger, earlier and has a higher value unit," said Nomura Code's Bunce.
He said the Nuon deal is worth more than analysts had expected because it relates to a 2 KW fuel cell, rather than the 1 KW unit that had been assumed. But production will start three to six months later than hoped, in the second half of 2009.
Nuon is the Netherlands' largest energy firm and Ceramic Fuel Cells' partner in that market.
Australia and Europe-based Ceramic Fuel is also developing its fuel cell stacks with E.ON's Powergen, Germany's EWE and Gaz de France.
Ceramic Fuel said it will invest 12.4 million euros to build a manufacturing plant to make the units in Heinsberg, Germany. (Reporting by Chris Wills and Hsu Chuang Khoo; Editing by Catherine Evans)
full article
Saturday 1 March 2008
Friday 29 February 2008
No impact from Energy Saving Day
The UK's first Energy Saving Day has ended with no noticeable reduction in the country's electricity usage.
E-Day asked people to switch off electrical devices they did not need over a period of 24 hours, with the National Grid monitoring consumption.
It found that electricity usage was almost exactly what would have been expected without E-Day.
Colder weather than forecast in some regions may have led to higher use of heating, masking any small savings.
The event also received very little publicity, despite having backing from campaign groups such as Greenpeace, Christian Aid and the RSPB, and from major energy companies such as EDF, E.On and Scottish Power.
"I am afraid that E-Day did not achieve the scale of public awareness or participation needed to have a measurable effect," said E-Day's organiser Dr Matt Prescott in a message on his website.
The Grid's final figures showed national electricity consumption for the 24 hours (from 1800 Wednesday to 1800 Thursday) was 0.1% above the "business-as-usual" projection.
full article
E-Day asked people to switch off electrical devices they did not need over a period of 24 hours, with the National Grid monitoring consumption.
It found that electricity usage was almost exactly what would have been expected without E-Day.
Colder weather than forecast in some regions may have led to higher use of heating, masking any small savings.
The event also received very little publicity, despite having backing from campaign groups such as Greenpeace, Christian Aid and the RSPB, and from major energy companies such as EDF, E.On and Scottish Power.
"I am afraid that E-Day did not achieve the scale of public awareness or participation needed to have a measurable effect," said E-Day's organiser Dr Matt Prescott in a message on his website.
The Grid's final figures showed national electricity consumption for the 24 hours (from 1800 Wednesday to 1800 Thursday) was 0.1% above the "business-as-usual" projection.
full article
Tuesday 26 February 2008
Nanoparticles could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline
The hydrogen economy is getting a shot in the arm from a start-up that says its nanoparticle coatings could make hydrogen easy to produce at home from distilled water, and ultimately bring the cost of hydrogen fuel cells in line with that of fossil fuels.
QuantumSphere Inc. says it has perfected the manufacture of highly reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings that could up the efficiency of electrolysis, the technique that generates hydrogen from water. Moreover, the coatings could also eliminate the need for expensive metals like platinum in hydrogen fuel cells.
Boasting 1,000 times the surface area of traditional materials, the coatings can be used to retrofit existing electrolysers to increase their efficiency to 85 percent--exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10 percent. The scheme holds the promise of 96 percent efficiency by the time cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells hit automobile showrooms, according to the Santa Ana, Calif., company.
"Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on the vehicle," said Kevin Maloney, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of QuantumSphere. "Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."
The first commercial product inspired by QuantumSphere's technology will debut later this year: a battery using a cathode coated with the startup's nanoparticles, thereby increasing its energy density 5x over alkaline cells and boosting power by 320 percent. The first commercial nonrechargeable batteries with this increased capacity will be announced by an as-yet-unnamed major U.S. battery maker in the second half of 2008.
QuantumSphere also claims to be able to improve rechargeable nickel-metal-hydride batteries to the point where they perform better than the less environmentally friendly lithium-ion batteries popular today.
QuantumSphere's plan is first to retrofit existing electrolysis equipment with its nanoparticle electrodes to boost efficiency. Next, it intends to partner with original equipment manufacturers to design at-home and on-vehicle electrolysers for making hydrogen from water for fuel cells. Finally, the company wants to work with fuel cell makers to replace their expensive platinum electrodes with inexpensive stainless-steel electrodes coated with nickel-iron nanoparticles.
by R.C.JOHNSON
full article
QuantumSphere Inc. says it has perfected the manufacture of highly reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings that could up the efficiency of electrolysis, the technique that generates hydrogen from water. Moreover, the coatings could also eliminate the need for expensive metals like platinum in hydrogen fuel cells.
Boasting 1,000 times the surface area of traditional materials, the coatings can be used to retrofit existing electrolysers to increase their efficiency to 85 percent--exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10 percent. The scheme holds the promise of 96 percent efficiency by the time cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells hit automobile showrooms, according to the Santa Ana, Calif., company.
"Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on the vehicle," said Kevin Maloney, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of QuantumSphere. "Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."
The first commercial product inspired by QuantumSphere's technology will debut later this year: a battery using a cathode coated with the startup's nanoparticles, thereby increasing its energy density 5x over alkaline cells and boosting power by 320 percent. The first commercial nonrechargeable batteries with this increased capacity will be announced by an as-yet-unnamed major U.S. battery maker in the second half of 2008.
QuantumSphere also claims to be able to improve rechargeable nickel-metal-hydride batteries to the point where they perform better than the less environmentally friendly lithium-ion batteries popular today.
QuantumSphere's plan is first to retrofit existing electrolysis equipment with its nanoparticle electrodes to boost efficiency. Next, it intends to partner with original equipment manufacturers to design at-home and on-vehicle electrolysers for making hydrogen from water for fuel cells. Finally, the company wants to work with fuel cell makers to replace their expensive platinum electrodes with inexpensive stainless-steel electrodes coated with nickel-iron nanoparticles.
by R.C.JOHNSON
full article
Friday 22 February 2008
Solar cell speeds hydrogen production
A solar cell that mimics photosynthesis has been used to make hydrogen directly from water. The prototype is inefficient, but the researchers who built it believe they can boost its efficiency, perhaps leading to a viable source of hydrogen to fuel cars and other vehicles.
The device, built by Thomas Mallouk of Pennsylvania State University and colleagues, works much like a solar cell called a Grätzel cell, using sunlight to knock electrons off dye molecules. But instead of being used to create a current, as in the Grätzel cell, the electrons are shuttled away from the dye and into a catalyst, where they split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen ions in a reaction similar to one stage of natural photosynthesis.
Other dye-based approaches to splitting water haven't worked very well because the electrons often recombine with the dye before they can be used. Mallouk says that the problem was a matter of arranging the molecular circuitry to channel the electrons effectively, avoiding such “short circuits”.
His solution is to attach ruthenium-based dye molecules to a catalyst particle, clinging so closely that any electrons knocked out of the dye are directed into the catalyst. "The key thing is to get everything small and individually packaged," Mallouk told New Scientist.
In the new device, water is split a thousand times faster than in other dye-based cells.
Elegant and original
“The attractive feature of the work is that the dye is wrapped around the iridium oxide nanoparticles. This is a very elegant and original approach,” says Michael Grätzel of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, inventor of the Grätzel cell.
The approach may also be more promising than semiconductor approaches, which are incredibly complex, says James Durrant of Imperial College, London, UK.
Mallouk admits that so far the cell is very inefficient, as only around 1% of the light energy falling on it goes into splitting water, but he says that with some optimisation of the geometry and the molecules the efficiency could rise to 10% per cent. “Because we understand the relationship between intermolecular distances and electron transfer rates, we can in principle improve our system by changing the linking groups between molecules.”
full article
The device, built by Thomas Mallouk of Pennsylvania State University and colleagues, works much like a solar cell called a Grätzel cell, using sunlight to knock electrons off dye molecules. But instead of being used to create a current, as in the Grätzel cell, the electrons are shuttled away from the dye and into a catalyst, where they split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen ions in a reaction similar to one stage of natural photosynthesis.
Other dye-based approaches to splitting water haven't worked very well because the electrons often recombine with the dye before they can be used. Mallouk says that the problem was a matter of arranging the molecular circuitry to channel the electrons effectively, avoiding such “short circuits”.
His solution is to attach ruthenium-based dye molecules to a catalyst particle, clinging so closely that any electrons knocked out of the dye are directed into the catalyst. "The key thing is to get everything small and individually packaged," Mallouk told New Scientist.
In the new device, water is split a thousand times faster than in other dye-based cells.
Elegant and original
“The attractive feature of the work is that the dye is wrapped around the iridium oxide nanoparticles. This is a very elegant and original approach,” says Michael Grätzel of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, inventor of the Grätzel cell.
The approach may also be more promising than semiconductor approaches, which are incredibly complex, says James Durrant of Imperial College, London, UK.
Mallouk admits that so far the cell is very inefficient, as only around 1% of the light energy falling on it goes into splitting water, but he says that with some optimisation of the geometry and the molecules the efficiency could rise to 10% per cent. “Because we understand the relationship between intermolecular distances and electron transfer rates, we can in principle improve our system by changing the linking groups between molecules.”
full article
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