Hannover Day 2

Kerry-Ann
After the first day over and a short time to think it is already possible to say that this has been the best Hannover Fair Group Exhibit too date. And we are not the only ones saying this by a long way.

Why? Well though overall footfall is lower the visitors that are here are (in general):
1.educated on the fuel cell and hydrogen industries,
2.serious about the growth potential,
3.the majority have product to sell now
4.wanting to do business.

This morning we were entertained by Chris Curtis vice president of Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Canada who is here to promote not just the trade organisation but also next years international conference in Vancouver. (see the listing on our website for more information on this). Chris has been around the industry for a long time and has a range of very interesting and colourful opinions on the barriers and drivers that we face. Whilst we don’t often promote peoples viewpoints in this update we do hope he writes his memoirs!!

Also today I had a chance to meet with a new company, to me at least, of FutureE. A small team that worked in Ballard (Germany) for a number of years left to form FutureE. Using Ballard stacks the company produces 2 – 10kW backup power units for the telecommunications industry. Jupiter, as the unit is called, will be available to select customers from October 2008 with a potential global roll out later next year. The unit has impressive performance statistics with the team employing its unique knowledge base to employ non stack based techniques to reduce unit degradation. The next steps for the team are to produce a 1kW unit for base stations that run off electrolytic hydrogen using renewable energy and potentially longer term for off-grid homes.

Topsoe Fuel Cells are one of the many companies exhibiting here for the first time. The company has an impressive stand for its pre-commercial SOFC units. At present the company not only produces SOFC stacks with a current capability of 5MW per annum (just for R&D and demo projects) but also its own reformer and a system with reformer, stack etc engineered together. The units are being targeted at three main applications, small stationary for homes, APUs for trucking and large stationary units in conjunction with Wartsilia. Interestingly for me was the mix of policy driven and commercial driven markets that the units will be used in. For example the APU in trucks market is policy driven as now in the USA it is forbidden to have trucks idling overnight creating a market for electricity and heat producers that can, initially at least, run off diesel. Residential though is at present commercially driven with the number of replacement boilers each year in the EU running into the multiple millions. The next five years will see the company make a number of business critical decisions on issues such as when to go commercial and how many components apart from the stack to carry on producing in- house.

Jon
Fuel cells in aircraft may seem like a distant prospect, but their near-term potential has recently been demonstrated by Intelligent Energy’s test flight of a fuel cell powered plane, and also the ongoing work by the German Aerospace Research Center (DLR) focused on fuel cell APU for aircraft. The DLR has been working with Airbus on putting a 20 kW unit into an A320 to power emergency systems such as pneumatic pumps and hydraulics. These fuel cells can be retro-fitted into existing aircraft and the DLR is looking at the business case for doing this in the period 2012-13. Longer term, the DLR hopes to develop a commercial multifunction fuel cell system that will not only provide onboard power for hotelling loads, but also provide fresh water for toilets and to humidify the air conditioning system. The timescale for development of this system will be dependent on the timescale of the next generation of aircraft but, given the setbacks inherent in bringing a new aircraft to market (witness the delays with the Boeing Dreamliner and A380), this is likely to be some way in the future. More immediately, the DLR has a real value proposition in developing SOFC based APUs for vehicles and is working with BMW in bringing these to top-end vehicles.

I also caught up with Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), another German research institute which is doing some very interesting work with DMFC fuelled materials handling vehicles. FZJ has a class 3 materials handling vehicle (a small pallet truck) powered by a 5 kW DMFC on display on their stand, developed in conjunction with Junheinrich. This is currently being trialled in various warehouse locations in Europe, including in a Tesco warehouse in the UK. Although FZJ’s primary focus is on R&D, the organisation is very interested in getting demo, and ultimately commercial, units out in the field and anticipate demand of thousands of units per year in the next decade. There is certainly a massive potential market for FC powered materials handling vehicles (for projections, refer to Fuel Cell Today’s 2008 Industry Review) and DMFC powered units have the advantage of simplified refuelling requirements of hydrogen fuelled systems. However, DMFCs are generally limited materials handling applications with lower power requirements (up to 5 kW, that is Class 3 materials handling vehicles) and there is still some way to go on durability, lifetime and integration with hybrid powertrains. For more on this, look out for our forthcoming Niche Transport Survey.

There are far too many companies here to cover individually in the daily report – so sorry if we spoke to you but you don’t get name-checked! I was impressed today, however by Tropical Fuel Cell, the Greek distributor for Horizon’s fuel cell products and an exciting systems integrator in their own right. I was also impressed that the Dana Corporation, who have decades of experience in producing head gaskets for the automotive industry, seem unfazed by the prospect of producing thousands or tens of thousands of bipolar plates in the next few years. I also had a quick chat with IdaTech, who are hoping that the forthcoming Federal Communications ruling on telecoms backup power will mean a bug ramping up in demand for their PEM units.

Nick
One of the most interesting interviews I have listened to today was the 2pm slot shared by Eoin Connolly form Plug Power and Jason Marcinkoski from the United States Department of Energy (DOE). In keeping with the USA’s desire for energy security the DOE is seriously considering the potential that fuel cells have to achieve this. Jason reports that they have set all their targets for the required infrastructure by 2015 so that everything is in place for a decision to be made on whether to aim for commercialisation of fuel cells in the US by 2020. In the mean time Jason looked to the stationary sector to be an area where fuel cells will emerge earlier on a commercial basis, citing Plug Power’s 5th generation home CHP unit. Eoin explained that the results of field tests that had undertaken with previous models showed that in the home more heat was required than electricity. This lead to the development of their new unit which has been described as the marriage of a PEM and Phosphoric acid platform enabling it to operate at higher temperatures.

On the topic of energy security I have been looking out for military fuel cell applications, if there is anyone developing fuel cell applications for the military, please get in touch with me. I will be including an analysis in my report later in the week.

The development of ‘Innovation Alley’ – the part of the show featuring SMEs, mainly component manufacturers, has been a massive success and we will focus tomorrows report just on this area.

Kerry-Ann, Jon and Nick