Fuel Cell Nation

Forbes Fuel Cell Article Errors

It looks like Forbes needs more technical fact checkers who are familiar with green energy technologies. In the interim, I provided that service in a comment to an article. Forbes "called out" my comment, meaning they thought it worthwhile.

In Forbes' recent article "Fuel Cells Inching into Power Generation Markets," Ken Silverstein gives a good overview of power generation in the stationary market. He starts the story by discussing how fuel cells are a better fit to today's stationary power market, compared to the automotive fuel cell market. Then the remainder of the article discusses FuelCell Energy, United Technologies, and Bloom Energy's power solutions. Unfortunately, Ken does not discuss the approximately 1,500 fuel cell-powered fork lift trucks that have been installed in the last 3 years.

However, the article's biggest shortcomings involved technical matters. For example, Ken says “Fuel cells work by separating hydrogen from oxygen.” My correction points out that this should read “Fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen.” Quite a bit of a difference there.

My comment there goes on to point out four additional factual corrections. Feel free to go to Forbes and take issue with my corrections, or add your own comments. For instance, I didn't take issue with his quoted thermal and electrical efficiencies, but some of them do seem a bit off.

DOE Webinar Recording: Top 5 Fuel Cell States

In my recent post DOE Webinar: Top 5 Fuel Cell States, I mention that the webinar recorded June 21, 2011 will be made available on-line.

Here is the recorded webinar. (It is in WMV format, so it's better to open it in Internet Explorer than in Firefox.)

In case you miss it during the hour-long presentation, the top 5 states are:

• California
• Connecticut
• New York
• South Carolina
• Ohio

(As an aside, just like the the May 23, 2011 webinar titled "Hydrogen Production by PEM Electrolysis—Spotlight on Giner and Proton," this webinar also had audio problems. Not sure if bad audio is an ongoing problem at gotomeeting.com, but neither webinar escaped audio problems!)

DOE Webinar: Top 5 Fuel Cell States

 
Looks like the U.S. DOE is getting into the Internet age! Coming shortly on the heels of the Webinar "Hydrogen Production by PEM Electrolysis—Spotlight on Giner and Proton", here is "DOE and Partners to Host Webinar June 21: Top Five Fuel Cell States – Why Local Policies Mean Green Growth". The Webinar is Tuesday, June 21, 2011 from 12:00 to 1:00 PM EDT.

 This webinar is with the Technology Transition Corporation and the Clean Energy States Alliance, and will discuss state policies and business development details. It is designed to supply information to companies thinking of buying a fuel cell energy system, as well as states that are interested in expanding their fuel cell incentives.

Hopefully these DOE efforts will enable and expansion of domestic fuel cell activities!