Mar 04 - North County Times, Calif.



A residential fuel cell produces electricity more efficiently and with less carbon dioxide than a utility gas turbine -- and no one in San Diego or Riverside counties has one.

It's too new. The electricity-generation alternative didn't exist on a scale practical for home users until 2009.

It's so new that representatives from San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison said they have no residential fuel cell customers.

To introduce the device, which is about the size of a refrigerator and can power an entire home, the California Center for Sustainable Energy is holding two seminars next week to explain the costs and benefits of these high-tech generation units.

 A unit for home use produced by Portland, Ore.-based ClearEdge Power produces 5 kilowatts and costs $56,000.

It uses 40 percent less gas and produces 37 percent less carbon than a utility turbine, and it does it all in a fraction of the space required for cleaner technologies such as solar and wind, the company said.

As it happens, fuel cells have been around for decades -- the Gemini space missions used them in the early 1960s -- but they've been too large and too expensive for residential use.

Models that produce 1 megawatt or more are already at work at UC San Diego and the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, and hospitals sometimes use fuel cells for backup generation.

But last year, Panasonic Corp. released a small, 1 kw unit for the Japanese market, and ClearEdge released its 5 kw unit for the United States.

Together, they're bringing fuel cell power to the home customer.

To produce power, the fuel cell takes the hydrogen from gas -- and it can be natural gas, off-gas from garbage dumps, or biomass -- and strips it of electrons.

A platinum barrier allows positively charged ions to take a short cut through the cell, but negatively charged electrons are forced out of the cell and into an electric circuit, providing electricity to the house.

To complete the circuit, the electrons return to the cell, where they meet the hydrogen ions and oxygen in the air to produce water.

Oh, and heat. Lots of heat. More heat than electricity.

ClearEdge Vice President Mike Upp said that when converted into the same units, his fuel cell produces 51 megawatts of heat in a year, as compared with 43 mw of electricity.

That heat can be put to good use: Upp said it could heat water for showers, and keep a pool comfortable even on coastal properties.

A house that needs a 5 kw system is going to be pretty big, probably 3,000 square feet or more.

Upp said they're working on a 3 kw system that would be more appropriate for a 2,000-square-foot house, although he thinks they're a year or two away from that.

In the meantime, he said that the fuel cells work well with solar to provide electricity that's always available, and they get the benefits of net metering: When the house is producing its own electricity, homeowners are credited on their bill (but still pay for natural gas).

With state and federal incentives, the $48,000 price tag is cut in half, but the technology is still more expensive than solar power.

One installer offers $5.29 a watt for solar, while the fuel cell runs at $9.60 a watt.

Both technologies can be had for lower prices with state and federal incentives.

But some clean-energy experts aren't that enthusiastic about the environmental benefits of fuel cells.

"I would tout them as greener -- I wouldn't say they're green," said Mark Snyder, an electrical engineer and expert in alternative energy generation. "Gas doesn't, in my view, come under a renewable resource."

Snyder supported the idea of fuel cells for places such as Vermont and New York, where solar and wind are less viable, and the waste heat can be used during the long winters.

And he liked the idea of a fuel cell as a backup for solar power systems.

But mostly, he thought of fuel cells as a temporary solution.

"Use it as a bridge technology to get to a completely renewable future," he said.

The Center for Sustainable Energy will hold introductory seminars on fuel cells for business owners and residents March 8. To register, call 858-244-1177 or go to www.energycenter.org/fuelcells.

Call staff writer Eric Wolff at 760-740-5412.

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