Fuel Cell Technologies closing shop
Its solid-oxide fuel cell technology was sound and had potential, but Kingston-based Fuel Cell Technologies Ltd. hasn’t been able to make a business out of it. The company announced today that its workforce was being terminated, most of its board has resigned, and a financial advisor has been retained to sell the company’s assets or raise capital.
The company had hopes of commercializing its SOFC technology, and numerous demonstrations proved that it was heading in the right direction. For example, four 5-kilowatt systems were being used to provide heat and electricity to a campus residence at the University of Toronto in Mississauga. Unfortunately, the company lacked the capital and likely the management skills to move it forward in a market that has become increasingly skeptical of the potential of fuel-cell technology. The irony is that this company’s SOFC system actually had that potential.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
October 17th, 2006 at 4:10 am
Too bad..
stationary SOFC I thought were one of the few good uses of fuel cells — for buffering & storing intermittent wind / solar power.
I’m sure the technology will live on in some other company.. once people start to construct turbines & solar power en masse.
Matt
October 19th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
5KW? This is not a good market for SOFC. There are plenty of good ICE diesel engines in that space already. No wonder they cratered.