A Mini Power Station for the Home Print E-mail
In a recent web article 'fuelcellworks' announced that the traditional household heating boiler could be a thing of the past.  Such an innovative device has been designed and successfully tested by Ceres Power, an Aim listed group.  The device is a 1kW 'fuel cell stack' that will generate sufficient power for the average home.  Peter Bance of Ceres Power said "This is a key milestone for the business, it is like the shift from mainframe computers to PC's".

To date fuel cell technology has been powered by hydrogen, however the fuel cell stack that has been developed by Ceres Power can also generate electricity and heat from natural gas.  This combined heat and power (CHP) technology is very successful in producing a boiler that amazingly fits very neatly into the palm of a hand.  Normally a convertional boiler only produces heat in the form of water or steam, however in the Ceres Power development a chemical reaction gives both heat and electricity.  It can also allow for any surplus electricity generated to be sold to the National Grid.

The cost of the technology is expected to be about the same as a conventional household boiler and in addition, Ceres Power believes that savings could be around 30 and 40% of the total electrical cost of the home.  In addition this technology has the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The boiler will be initially marketed to customers of British Gas, the subsidiary of Centrica which last year signed a commercial development agreement with Ceres Power.

We at RSP are very interested in the development of this technology as we see it as having a significant cost and energy saving effect for many of the future design proposals that we will offer to a wide range of existing and new clients.  In addition it will have a significant role in reducing adverse environmental impacts and aiding environmental sustainability.

The above information is a digest of an article that was published by fuelcellworks on the 12.03.2006 - source: Sylvia Pfeifer - The Telegraph.