Fuel Cell Technologies Ltd., a neat little company operating out of Kingston, Ont., says it has shipped a 5-kilowatt solid oxide fuel cell to the Memphis Botanic Garden for co-generation of heat and power, using natural gas as its source of energy.

“Supplying heat and electrical power to the convervatory greenhouse, the FCT system will be used to provide domestic hot water and maintain the tropical environment required in the greenhouse,” the company said in a release.

John Stannard, president and CEO of Fuel Cell Technologies, acknowledged the importance of having natural gas suppliers as partners. “These utilities have the potential to become major customers of FCT, and installations such as this confirm that the technology is on the path towards commercialization,” he said.

If FCT has its way, major natural gas providers such as Enbridge would sell solid oxide fuel cell units to households through long-term leases. The technology would not only replace the heating and hot water requirements of homes already supplied by natural gas, but would convert natural gas to electricity, thereby making natural gas companies direct competitors to local power utilities. The idea is that natural gas will some day provide all the power and heating requirement in any home, and that consumers/businesses will save from the efficiencies gained through co-generation.

The open question is whether a fossil fuel like natural gas is an ideal replacement for grid power, particularly as grid power becomes less dependent on coal and moves toward natural gas and renewables? Perhaps the co-generation aspect and the related efficiencies do make this a “clean” alternative. Of interest also is that FCT’s solid oxide fuel cell can easily be rigged to run on hydrogen when (assuming if) that infrastructure becomes readily available.

For more info on FCT and other projects it’s involved in, check out this article I wrote last August. In March, FCT also announced the installation of its first residential fuel cell at a government-funded demonstration home in Ottawa.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2005 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.