Domestic Fuel Cells

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A couple of years ago I saw a lot of news about these.

Something the size of your hot water boiler that ran on mains gas but provided all your electricity as well as heat and hot water and for much less money. At the time, they were quoting upwards of £10k for a typical home but with significant savings with running costs.

At the time I thought that this looked like the ideal way to go when the time came to replace my hot water boiler because whilst it was more expensive that a boiler alone, it wan't that much more and of course would deliver long term savings.

But all the talk seems to have stopped. No mention of the trials that the likes of British Gas and EDF were doing back then.

So what gives?

Did the technology fail? Was it too expensive?

I know the likes of Bloom are using similar technology in the commercial world with the likes of eBay, Amazon and Facebook using their kit to power their data centres but what about me?

IronGiant

I think these are hydrogen fuel cells that are being used to generate electricity as back up generators.  Mains gas fuel cells I've not come across (or more likely forgotten about )

Edit: My mistake they are being used by the companies you mentioned but are unlikely to be readily available to the domestic market just yet:  BlueGen Technology

[email protected]

So the commercial ones are up and running. They are absolutely being used as the primary fuel source for a number of large scale energy consumers (such as data centres)

See here Clean, Renewable Energy | Bloom Energy Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

I'm just surprised that this technology doesn't seem to have filtered down to the domestic market. As you say there was lots of talk and a Google search brings plenty up but its all about 2 years old.

IronGiant

Google tells me that Panasonic are planning to sell hydrogen powered domestic units in Germany this year Panasonic Gambles On Micro-CHP Fuel Cells In Germany - Forbes

johntheexpat

I think there was a thread here a while back on this. IIRC Worcester Bosch were developing one with something like 9KW of heat and 1 KW of electricity, running on gas.

I'll go and have a look.

CHPs rather than fuel cells;
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