A new fuel cell combined heat and power (CHP) unit could be generating cheap, reliable and low carbon electricity in UK homes by 2011 – helping achieve government targets to cut UK carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Fuel cells offer a highly efficient, quiet way of producing electricity and heat with fewer emissions than traditional power-generating products. They generate power significantly more efficiently than combustion engines because they convert chemical energy directly to electrical energy rather than via several intermediate stages. Ceres Power’s new intermediate temperature fuel cell technology aims to meet the requirements for a residential CHP product that can be wall mounted, manufactured in mass market volumes, connected to the home in a similar manner to a normal boiler, and offer attractive economic and carbon savings. The single integrated unit can generate all the hot water and central heating needed by a typical UK home, together with the majority of the electricity.
The original research underlying Ceres Power’s solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology was carried out at Imperial College London with funding from the Research Councils UK Energy Programme. Ceres Power was then created in 2001 to develop and commercialise the technology, raising funding first from private equity and then via a stock market flotation in 2004.
Subsequently, funding for certain project activity has also been provided by the DTI and the Technology Strategy Board.
One of these projects helped to develop an engineering demonstrator of the CHP unit which was shown in summer 2007, confirming the feasibility of integrating Ceres technology into a compact product able to access the mass market for replacement of conventional boilers.
In 2008, Ceres Power signed a commercial agreement with British Gas to manufacture and launch a natural gas fuelled CHP system in 2011. Potential also exists for marketing the CHP system outside the UK as over 80 per cent of the boilers sold in Western Europe are wall-mountable.
The potential of fuel cell technology also goes beyond residential uses. “Fuel cell technology has the potential to transform more than just the domestic central heating market,” says Ceres Power co-founder Professor Nigel Brandon. “It shows great potential for other applications, such as powering vehicle auxiliary power units and efficient off-grid power generation.”
The company has since acquired a volume manufacturing facility for its fuel cells and has signed an agreement with Calor Gas Ltd to produce a fuel cell CHP product operating on liquefied petroleum gas.