Power to the People

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Cracking the Nut

Two key obstacles have historically stood in the way of widespread fuel cell use. First, fuel cells run on hydrogen, which exists in abundance, but almost never alone. What this means is that before hydrogen can be employed to produce energy, it must be separated from whatever element it happens to be bonding with. In the case of water, for example, the H 2 S would need to be separated from the Os. This is hardly an impossible task, but current methods are cumbersome, expensive and ill-suited for large-scale production.

Other sources of hydrogen include fossil fuels. Natural gas, for instance, is one part carbon for every four parts hydrogen, or CH 4 .

In the past few years, scientists in the U.S. and Europe have produced devices broadly labeled "reformers" that can efficiently recover hydrogen from a variety of fossil fuels, including natural gas, propane and methanol. Researchers are also working on reformers for gasoline (for automotive applications), as well as for diesel.

Plug Power and its competitors have integrated these reformers into their fuel cell systems, enabling on-site hydrogen production and eliminating the need for hydrogen transport and storage. The other huge upside, of course, is that households already hooked up to natural gas lines or equipped with propane tanks are essentially set to make the switch to fuel cell power.

But the hydrogen dilemma was only half the riddle. All PEM fuel cells require platinum as a catalyst. In fact, until recently, these fuel cells required so much platinum that their mass production was an economic impossibility.

"Ten or 15 years ago, we would have needed close to $10,000 worth of platinum to make this device," says Acker. "Today, we need well under $100—and it has absolutely nothing to do with the price of platinum." The difference, says Acker, is in the amount of the metal needed. Recent technological breakthroughs have made it possible, he explains, to produce a residential fuel cell system that can power a house, using only about twice the amount of platinum found in the catalytic converter of every car.

But what does using platinum, a nonrenewable resource, do to a fuel cell's environmental score sheet? Acker notes that while platinum is not renewable, it is recyclable. And since the platinum used in fuel cells is neither diminished nor degraded, it can, at the end of a system's useful life, be retrieved and used again.

The Race to Market

With the biggest technological obstacles overcome, the race to market was on. At least five companies in the U.S. have pledged to commercialize residential fuel cell systems within the next 15 to 36 months. And all are backing that pledge with thousands of man hours and millions of dollars.

Leading the pack is Plug Power, which in June 1998 became the first company to completely power a house with a residential fuel cell stack. The three-bedroom brick ranch, home to a trio of company engineers, has been running on the 7kW system ever since.

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