Ceres Power | Fully Charged
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2017
- A British company making a world beating product, fuel cells. Cheap abundant materials, existing manufacturing technology, disruptive technology coming into the energy market. Pure genius.
More info: www.cerespower.com/
Patreon: / fullychargedshow - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Dr. Brian Steel... makes new fuel cell from steel... **drops tea cup**
Well, that's a given, a full professor at a London university...
Nominative determinism.
this guy is straight up awesome. I have looked up videos on fuel cells, reporters always gave generic info on them without specs. I respect you for asking the important questions. love your show.
Thanks for the education on fuel cells.
Appreciated this transparency :D lovely vid
They are easily bribed just a plain sandwich is sufficient. ;)
Christoph G. No filling either
Romain Hedouin
WHAAAT!!!! it's a load of anthropomorphic climate change bollocks!
And you expect us to believe that you know what anthropomorphic actually means? Just like you know better than all the an emotional, rational (read not bought by oil) scientists. Please, pull the other one, git.
OMG they brought him sandwiches he's a sellout lol
Thank you Robert. I have been learning a lot lately about energy, renewables, and solutions for energy problems. Your style and approach are light and pleasant to watch, while the depth and contents are valuable and technical enough to be useful. It is a very difficult balance to keep and you are doing it masterfully.
this show makes me happy. please keep making more!!!
This is the most professionally made show on TH-cam, the presenter is a total natural.......should be on tv!
He's an old hand, 's been on UK TV in lots of things.
Nah, comes off as a robot to me!
Brilliant thanks for the update. Lovely to see intelligent people taking on real problems and finding solutions.
Glad you're featuring Ceres Power! I designed and build a machine for their production line and was happy to see it at 3:13 :)
Fantastic as always. It's an interesting idea and glad to see British companies doing well in this area, we're great in Britain at manufacturing advanced kit, it's a shame it's not so widely know by the greater public.
YASA motors is an absolute engineering gem. Much love from USA.
the british are always great at inventing... but only german, american or japan can make / sell their invention better. soon this company will be owned by the german / japan company... or maybe chinesse company..
Where is your evidence of this? I think you need to read this mate: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_innovations_and_discoveries
It doesn't make economic sense to the current batch of uk energy suppliers to even consider this new idea, they would loose money. So its up to the government to force thier hand. Thats what there doing in Germany and Japan. Our own Government has to step in! Thats the down side of private enterprise. Where as government run energy systems could introduce almost instantly.
Kim Boom Joong
You need to do some reading. The British are most inventive ever on this planet. What you are looking at now is the World Wide Web. Guess where Berners-Lee came from.
A great idea well delivered, I have wanted to know more about CERES for ages, and have even applied to work for them on occasions.
This explained what they do so much clearer than the multiple videos on the Ceres website.
Much more precise info. needed. But thanks for the diversity of products/topics covered.
At last a programme not slating one technology over another! Good effort!
Great video, thanks for putting this together. What a potential game changer!
Excellent video Robert thank you.
great effort, appreciable their fuel cell development for future all types of usage,,,
Great stuff. I'd have liked to hear installation cost versus yearly savings, which gives you the period until break even. I think that's the incentive people need to hear (I do) and it's also a good way to compare options.
Would be great if car companies would install these fuel cells in place of a range extender engine in their vehicles that have that setup. Wonder how the mileage would differ between the fuel cell and the motor with the same size tank.
"They bought us sandwiches, I'M JUST BEING TRANSPARENT!"
brilliant.
Another great episode. Thank you.
Great video as always Robert. Very interesting tech, and right in my neck of the woods aswell!
YAAAAA This is another great show Thankyou I love all your vids great to know info
Wow! Now that's a fuel cell.
I always felt that H2 is bad and hard to ship around. Now this cell can just use gas!? Wonderful! Thank you for sharing!!!
It is really quite incredible. They are building efficient fuel cells out of fairly common materials. And moving production closer to consumer means you don't have transmissions losses that other power plants have. It seems like a really good option to compliment solar to give you a bit more energy when the sun doesn't shine.
AWESOME and exciting video!
I want more of this
Amazing things are getting much much better love the show
Such good news. I love this show.
Similar to what Bloom Energy Does in the US. K.R Sridhar who worked in Nasa had a vision to make this technology available to the world. I think that was way back in the late 2000. Good to see UK is pushing forward with this technology.
Ceres Power generates metallic based SOFC. The problem they have are
1: the SOFC cells they make are made of steel and ceramic. Therefore, due to different in thermal expansion of metal and ceramic, they can not last long for a periodic on-off operation due to periodic demand of a house (high morning and evening demand and less demand during midday).
2- As a byproduct of SFOC generates heat. This heat can be stored in hot tanks. Once the hot tank temperature reached a certain level, the fuel cell has to be stopped.
3- SOFC Fuel cells operate in excess of 550 degC, therefore, the start up operation of SOFCs can take time.
From all above points, it is hard to justify employing Ceres Power products in households. As evidence of this is they have not introduced any product to market, despite they had plan to so in 2010. The share price of Ceres Power gives good indication of they promises how believed by investors.
It is not a hard logic, SOFC Fuel cells operation requires steady operation and this can be achieved only when a part of required heat and electricity should be covered by SOFCs. Such a circumstances are large building, hotels, airports etc. For this type of applications, Ceramic based SOFC are better than metal based and hence, Ceres Power will not make a major impact in the market with their current technology.
Looks like ...they improved the tech...to address the thermal expansion problem through perforated metal sheet...and the process was patented.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
I absolutely adore what you are doing with this channel. It's really helping me to stay (or feel) on top of all the things developing in the field and I wish my govt tuned in all the time.
The only thing that could make me even happier was if you hired an illustrator from time to time. So thick peops like me could understand better how the cutting edge stuff you show us works.
P/S I don't know if I can get over the level of corruption you allowed yourselves to drop to when you accepted those sandwiches.
I love this channel.
I knew Professor Steele. Nice man!
I'm so excited for your hat.... and nice video too!
I was highly sceptical until they included the heat capture element of this, which makes it far more reasonable and efficient. It's essentially a localised version of power plant community heating projects.
"Fascinating" sounds like an understatement to me!
Great tech and great video
Looks promising! I never heard of this in any other news
Wow, good stuff. Never knew fuel cells had it made it this far.
A very encouraging development - some key IPR developed in the UK and being able to use common and hopefully cheap materials.
I wonder how this would perform with wood or digester gas.
Edit: By "wood" I mean "wood gas"
It was stated in the vid that it works on biogas (methane), so why not?
Lots of questions here.
- Does the system have to be pre-heated to 7 or 800 degrees to work?
- Does it need to continually run to function, no off state without long startup times?
- How much gas does it use at minimum (idling) and is this why you look to feeding out back to the grid while you're not home cause it has to just keep going no-matter what the home needs?
- What is the cost and life of the cells?
- Do they need cleaning due to impurities in the feed-in gas or does this just degrade the life cycle (block your micro-holes)?
- Does the system also need a water connection as well as a gas connection?
- Could it run as a generator in a caravan, or is the fuel used and waste heat, just too high?
wery interesting! learned a lot! thanks!
So efficiency-wise it's a little bit like running a combined cycle powerplant in your boiler cupboard? Decently efficient electricity generation, then the exhaust heat used for something else at a decent efficiency too.
Excellent vid!
Excellent technology!!
Cool video, I like the automation fast cut near the start ^^
Cheers
Fuel cells & Batteries : Energy Storage & Energy Conversion : Molecular Chemical Energy Systems
Humans are biological fuel cells, oxidizing carbon in our lungs to generate energy from our food, CO2 out like an engine that burns fuel, without the nasty tail pipe carcinogens associated with internal combustion engine emissions.
Fuel cells create energy cleanly like a biological fuel cell system. In both cases molecular chemical energy systems. We can learn from nature & fuel cells are examples of biological process in a man made system.
Solar photovoltaic panels convert sunlight into electricity, a design that originated in biological plant cells, photosynthetic chloroplasts are specialized cells than convert blue & red portions of sunlight to power the two major kinds of chloroplast, A & B respectively.
This was the best video I have seen yet. If I could get this unit in my house I would do it in a heartbeat. Do you know how much they cost?
This looks like a BLOOMBOX fuel cell. Regardless of who makes these, hats off to CERES POWER for producing them for residential use. BTW, I've been asking BLOOMBOX when they plan to produce a residential version without any response from them. Cheers!
Bloom Energy does not have credits or rights to Ceramic based SOFC. It is a massive category of technology. One of the Pioneers is CSIRO Australia in the early 1990s.
csiropedia.csiro.au/ceramic-fuel-cells/
Bloom Energy the Indian NASA scientist is making MWatt Containers for the use by big Corporations. Make the Rich more Richer, just like giving Monkey A Ladder !! It was 15 years ago when 60mins Plus interviewed Dr. Sridhar and he showed the lady a palm sized Box - proudly showing off which could power the House. Dreams only remain a dream. There are forces which will NEVER allow individual House to get its standalone power Unit. This could be done in a heartbeat and over a 100 years ago but alas, they start killing everyone who comes up with a machine to produce On Demand Power. Shame on those who control this area and shame on us that we can’t do ANYTHING about it.
@@SamMonkulas Bloom could not do it..due to economics. Even today...Bloom install cost per kwh.. is 6000us$.
Bloom still costs around 6000usd per kwh.
They need to bring this down to 3000usd. per kwh.
These cells would be amazing combined with a battery storage system to capture unused energy while you're not at home and the gas grid isn't under as much load from things like cooking and heating. Then when gas demand goes up, they can be switched off or reduced in output while your home runs on batteries to keep the overall consumption of gas lower.
I'd love to have one in my home, that's for sure.
I think this idea can work for such northern countries as the UK, Germany and Japan. But in much of the US heating is not the biggest use of grid electricity, AC is. So natural gas conversion plus heat efficiency gets reduced, or worse, causes the need for more AC.
Would have been good to hear about pricing for home use. Practicality etc.
Robert, great show. Pity no average price for the install of the system. Just watch the BBC show about you electrifying your village. can you give us an update please.
Seems very good but a few unanswered questions...
What is the price of installation?
What is the expected lifetime of the fuel cells?
If these issue can be resolved this will be a very helpful addition to our energy creation.
Brilliant. Local Aussie Company Ceramic Fuel Cell made one in the 1990-2007....but the Australian government forced them out of the country (to Germany) and now ???? CHP billiant. Not for Australia, because the Government has allowed all their mates (big business and relatives) sell all our gas overseas, leaving a gas shortage here and High prices. If you want to know what NOT to do look down under the government has stuffed it completely....
Robert Westinghouse I don’t understand why all governments are so rigid & slow to bring on something that can help make clean power except Japan & Estonien
Interesting. I am amazed that it doesn't care whether the input gas is methane, hydrogen or a mix. We've had micro-CHP systems for some time to make heat plus electricity in the home (such as Genelec (Rankine engine), and Baxi Ecogen (Stirling engine)). It seems this fuel-cell setup is quite a lot more efficient. I wonder if it's any cheaper? CHP works quite well if your demand for heat and electricity are well-matched, but in the UK they aren't really, in a domestic setup. For nearly half the year you need very little heat: some for hot water (which you could get from solar thermal instead), but much the same amount of electricity (some less for lighting).
And of course the usual question - how much does one cost? I see the development project for the domestic CHP started in 2005.
Good episode, personally this is what i like to see.
What a great technology. Love the videos, keep up the good work.
This fuel cell box can convert trucks and buses into the electric mode, even if there is no charging infrastructure, but just the gas infrastructure.
whoever starts a company for converting buses, trucks and cars to this fuel cell + electric motors, will make a lot of money from places where the electric infrastructure is not ready for electric cars.
Was there a mention of how much fuel it takes and how fast it uses the fuel? I know they gave a percent of efficiency but I feel like they should have given an amount of fuel to explain it better. This is a great step in the right direction!
This could be a big thing for Renewable energies, especially here in Germany with the large gas grid/storage facilities and all the e-gas projects from car manufacturers and utility companies. I wonder how good the reaction times of these fuel cells are since they do not use platinum but probably they could be used to create fuel cell/battery hybrid cars that could then run on e-gas and thus be carbon neutral and help smooth out the grid on institutional level. Great news indeed
Solid Oxide Fuel Cells like these can only operate at temperatures above 500 degrees C. Reaction times are poor unless you constantly waste energy keeping them hot even when the cells are not in use.
Thanks for the input. So these are just for stationary applications.
They're useful for non-static applications, but only if you can predict reliably when the fuel cell will be needed so you can warm it up ahead of time. I've heard about them being used in small UAVs for inspecting power lines or gas pipelines- in this case, they know exactly when the UAV will be launched, so they can simply heat up the fuel cell and have it ready just before the UAV is going to fly. The UAV gets power during peak loads (e.g. climbing after takeoff) from batteries, with the fuel cell providing a constant supply of energy for charging the batteries and powering the motor while cruising from place to place. Much more efficient than a small petrol engine.
Another pretty informative episode ... :/
Paul Hendrix do you mean uninformative?
blueGEN is another to check out, ceramic fuel cells australia make a pretty awesome system, power and hot water in one, they even recouped the water produced by the fuel cell. but they basically went but here, no government support, industry that didn't care etc, etc. I think they moved their operation to Germany, but that was like 10 years ago. dunno if they're still going
As a backup power in a isolated home it is the best solution. Because even with backup batteries, they could be not enough.
But if you are connected to the grid and you just need gas for hot water, this doesn't make sense, because a boiler is more effective for hot water and the energy from the electric grid is already majority green.
Even for cars, the problem of energy is almost solved with the faster charger, that are getting faster!
But is a cleaver solution, for some applications.
Robert there is still a Feed in Tariff for Solar panels.. not was. 4.14 pence per unit generation.. and another 5 pence per unit for excess energy exported to grid. Tax free, index linked and paid for 20 years.
i think this is pretty good with solarcity, to continue power your house in weeks with overcast ... i like this technology
It might be more compact than a battery wall piece. What about the exhaust, though?
If Ontario hydro rates get any higher then I'll have to get me a few of these. Union Gas sells by volume and not mass or BTU for some dumb reason so it's hard to calculate my savings. I'll have to move them outside during the summer so my air conditioner doesn't freak out.
This is the best news I've had today considering the man in the White House decided to pull the USA out of the Paris Accords. I hope the EU, England and the rest of the world will continue to move forward to create technologies, policies and change behaviors that will promote life and improve the quality of life for all of us here on this planet.
D R-K Do some research. The idea of the Paris Accords is very laudable. In reality it does very little except drain the wealth and industry of industrialized nations and make many international globalist and criminals very wealthy. It is just another way to control and manipulate people while stealing from them. Many more nations need to withdraw.
james gartman could you be so kind and post links to your research here?
james gartman
Yes, could you Give Us Credible Links .... you know the ones that don't come from a Conservative Nut cases who believe In UFO or Extra terrestrials.
FLYBOY805 l
Apparently you do not want links to viable resources and references to prove this. Since you have been brainwashed it seems you just want name calling. No nutcases just the UN official who crafted this agreement. He said that this agreement has nothing to do with the environment instead the redistribution of wealth from industrialized countries particularly the US to other third world countries. It would require the US to intentionally decrease its economic output-putting more people on welfare-while at the same time giving money to third world countries for their development. Practically all these countries have no environmental regulatory system so things would be worse. In addition, this money would be distributed through UN officials and you can be assured that very little of it would go to where it was intended. In other words a lot of it would be skimmed if not stolen.
welcome to Bloom Energy
What are your thoughts about battery technology vs other technologies like the one you're talking about? Who will be the eventual winner and will there just be one?
batteries store energy and fuel cells make it.
Fuel cells convert energy from fuel to electricity.
John Goodenough from Austin University has developed a new battery with higher energy density, faster charging time and cheaper to make. At the rate battery technology is improving, it can't be long before we see electric cars with a range of 1000Kms that will charge in minutes.
I didn't understood much so please make another video with more details.
One thing not mentioned when talking about efficiency is the fact that the gas must be transported to the house. In places where that is necessary for central heating, its not such big issue, but it shouldn't be ignored as gas leaks are a major problem and the whole infrastructure cost should not be left out of any cost analysis. It would have been interesting to see an analysis of how it would do as a battery using electrolysis to create hydrogen then back to electricity. Would the storage of the hydrogen make it nonviable for most locations and would the overall cost be competitive when compared to more conventional batteries.
I remember seeing something similar a few years ago, not sure where though.
Hey, could you review the Sion from Sono Motors, youˋll like it. Greetings and awesome job as always.
Hello!
Do you know anything about Silicon Graphite Power Cell?
It would be nice if you make a video about them (or even visit the company).
Nice job and keep going!
Thank you!
So what is the projected life of the fuel cell and if required how much does it cost to replace a failing cell ?
The piece seems to enthuse about use in the home, where is the gas coming from to drive this fuel cell, are they suggesting hydrogen from solar panel powered breakdown of water or maybe from the home natural gas supply coming in from the street ?
I've played this video twice and visited the companies web site but the source of fuel gas, no matter how catholic, is something not discussed.
This might be a good solution for pig farmers with their own digestors to produce CH4, but for home use as long as Cerespower continues to gloss over awkward questions, colour me sceptical.
Dogphlap it's better than burning gas in a power station to produce electricity at lower efficiency and then throwing the heat away (e.g. directly in to the sea which is what happens at my nearest gas power station). In many countries like the UK, peak heat demand drives peak electricity demand too, so this fuel cell electricity is available when it's most needed.
You say it is better . I say give me some numbers. You probably think to ask for some actual figures is abusive. I like to know the truth, you apparently not so much.
Eh? Who's being abusive? All these numbers are pretty easily available. Average efficiency of a CCGT power station is about 50% (the rest goes to heat - which is almost universally thrown away in the UK), subtract 5% to 10% from that for grid losses (always heat, and non-capturable because they're diffuse) - although it can be used in 'combined heat and power' district heating systems as it is in some places, these are expensive and difficult to retrofit.
In the UK, typical gas home heater (gas -> heat) is around 90% efficient. Their fuel cells are about 50% efficient (i.e. 50% to electricity, and 50% to heat), but the idea is that the heat is actually in a location (in your house) which is useful (and would be captured with a heat exchanger in the same way as it is from the 90% efficient gas home heater - so established tech). Extra bonus no nasty combustion bi-products such as NOx and particulates.
So with this sort of static fuel cell, you have around 90% of the gas energy used (same as just with the gas heater), except that 50% of it is now in a much more useful form (electricity instead of low grade heat in water), which can be sold to the grid, and fits with peak UK demand, with the remainder being used as it was before for hot water and space heating.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle
www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/
www.withouthotair.com/download.html
Well I watched this video a third time looking for the efficiency of the fuel cell, as far I can recall they are talking about 50% efficiency. You think that is good because you are comparing that to the efficiency of a gas turbine power station plus the 6.3% transmission loss but you have ignored the efficiency in producing the gas and getting it to the location of the fuel cell (a home ?). If you ignore losses in making the gas and distributing it but include the losses of electrical energy production and distribution you will get a skewed result.
Maybe this is a good idea, I'm sure it would be under certain circumstances like maybe as a backup source for electrical power at a data centre but I have yet to see real numbers to allow me to know just how good an idea this really is. I don't know enough to say if this is over hyped or not but I tend to get suspicious when a visit to their website shows no figures but lots of feel good marketing speak and a video that reminds me of a commercial selling soap powder.
Edit: and don't forget if you run this off town gas (which appears from this video to be the idea) it is the H2 that does the work plus oxygen from the air so all the C in CH4 will be exhausted to the atmosphere probably (again no real information supplied so we are left to guess) as CO2 with possibly some CO and maybe some of that favourite greenhouse gas of the moment unconverted CH4. It is more than possible I'm being unfair here, but how would we know when none of these concerns are addressed either in the video or on the companies website.
That about sums it up.
4 years later & still no commercial products available to the public
How does the efficiency compare to PV conversion. I presume they are selling these in Japan so that when there are power shortages (as there was after Fukashima). Is the tech just a more efficient power gen than burning gas.
What is the Ceramic made from?, are any of them toxic?, how long does one of your FC last if run continuesly?.
As always, Robert, thank you for your shows! I really enjoy them, and look forward to each new one as it comes online!
But...
Fuel Cells are a neat technology! But they are still, essentially, batteries. And right now, the only way to 'fill' them cheaply, is to use some form of carbon fuel (and this assumes that the fuel cell as a whole unit will ever get cheap enough to make). If you split water, as a non-carbon fuel source, to get Hydrogen for a Fuel Cell, you will have spent a lot more electricity to do it than what you will get out of the Fuel Cell- not as efficient as storing PV electricity into Li-Ion batteries. And with prices falling for Li-Ion batteries and for Solar Panels, and the capacity for batteries rising, I just don't see how fuel cells are a good option. And this is with fuel cells having non-stop research for the last 3-4 decades!
And for literally decades, fuel cells have been the Red Herring of Oil Companies and Car Manufacturers, as a way to put off EVs- this seems to me to be more of the same type of misdirection. And a quick search seems to indicate that the partners of CERES are Gas and Car companies. Perhaps I am being unfair to CERES, but I am certainly not being unfair to its carbon-loving partners. It is akin to Oil and Gas companies secretly funding Anti-Nuclear protest groups to keep Nuclear Plant technology on the shelf or diminished (see Pandora's Promise). I am sure they would rather see Fuel Cells using natural gas to power homes than PV cells and batteries (or nuclear). Every year EVs, batteries and non-carbon based power is delayed means billions of dollars/pounds in profits for these companies, and they care little for the consequence.
Being a cruising sailor, I have this notion of a propulsion/generation system that integrates a hydrogen fuel cell engine/generator, a reverse osmosis water maker (to convert sea to fresh), and a hydrogen separation and storage system. The theory being: unlimited access to sea water that is used as the base raw ingredient for a zero-emissions hydrogen-based power solution that's complemented by battery storage. Not sure about all the science, and the packaging maybe tricky, but a boat certainly provides more flexibility than, for example, an EV.
Many of the comments in the comments section are way off. The prime point was that a company has developed a new type of cheap to make fuel cell that could make an impact on the market. The electricity output of the cell is quite secondary. That can be scaled up to suit. One of these could be charging your EV overnight a lot cheaper than directly off the grid.
is it ready for use in the UK and do you have a price ??
I don't understand - is there combustion going on to generate electricity? Or is heat a by-product of a chemical reaction? Is there a flame with the Ceres unit?
I wonder what the weight is, per kWh running on methanol for example -- the entire system -- then compared to Li-Ion?
For homes, fuel cells can make sense due to the combined heat and power applications, but for cars it's a little silly. Boats? Maybe that would be a good use-case.
[Edit]: I'd also like to compare it, in stationary applications to a simple external combustion engine running on natural gas (for example an optimized Stirling engine). A stationary Stirling could achieve similar results as far as I know, and would be more fuel agnostic, but perhaps how would the costs and complexity compare?
Great Britain always seems to do well in leading the World especially in new this type of engineering. .......:)
Will these not use the fuel source if I'm not using any electricity. I'd still want a pass through battery between this and my home but I think I'd be more happy with solar/wind with that chem battery from a while back. At least with that you are not using natural resources. I'd use this more on a bio fuel dairy farm than in a home.
use those on landfill and sewer plant methane .
Would be nice as those gas left free in the atmosphere are terrible green house gasses
I want one!
hahaha closing the shot with a tesla as background, nice
A Tesla that won't fit in the parking bay either! ;)
how can I get one installed in my house in the UK now. how much does ur gas bill go up by?
Come on UK get your act together and let us make this organisation a global success and rather than dragging our feet..and letting others take the benefits..
This looks very promising. Might you consider an overview of how this fuel cell tech could be combined with rooftop solar to further reduce dependency on the grid? Would it be conceivable for the fuel cell to be the supplement to Solar and thus reduce grid us to next to zero? Thank you for your work.
In Northern areas, could be done, the fuel cell would be the winter heat, hot water & electricity source and the solar panels would be the summer electricity source, augmented by fuel cell hot water. Spring & Fall would be a mix of the two. The two actually complement each other nicely as in the North solar is crap in the winter when electricity needs are max. And you could substantially reduce your battery size by using the more consistent power output of the CHP generator. But you are still looking at a very expensive system, and you need a utility natural gas supply. That is not an energy solution in terms of climate change, because it is just too expensive and the EROI is too low, a very limited application geographically and still relies on high emissions natural gas.
whykhr , thank you for the response. I am in Minnesota, USA, so fairly northern. Utility supplies gas is fairly cheap and long term I think better than nuke energy. I look forward to see this fuel cell tech develop
YAY Finally covering SOFC. I've been harping about this on this channel for ages now. Hopefully more people understand how Hydrogen is a terrible form of energy transfer. But Fuel Cells of other types are still awesome.
This fuel cell would be A great way to use hydrogen from renewables if most of the 50% heat output can be harvested as mentioned in this item. Hydrogen can be produced from surplus renewables at up to 75% efficiency, I've heard. It's better than 'wasting' the renewable energy if demand is low.
@@gregbailey45 Hydrogen in that case only makes sense for Industrial Locally Produced and directly piped Distribution System. Distributing, Shipping & Pipe Hydrogen over long distance is just not viable. The molecule is just too tiny at 0.08988 grams/litre and causes many problems. But we could use other Fuel Cycles for Fuels cells which hopefully are Shelf Stable.
Maybe a good alternative for regions that don't have enough sun to make solar cost effective. I know some companies have bought these system to power their data center. If the grid has an outage (which is a common problem in the US), these can take over. It is also cheaper than buying the electricity from the grid!
Ok, so natural gas go's in to produce electricity at 50% efficiency. What byproduct is produced and what use does it have? Is that waste fed back into the system or is it lost? If you were looking for heat, doesn't a gas burning heater work at approximately 80-95%?
How does a 1 kW fuel cell generator power a whole house? I would expect that at least 30-40 kW would be needed for my home in the USA. My Tesla HPWC has a maximum draw of 19.6 kW and my furnace, to say nothing of the A/C, all draw well in excess of 1 kW. I wonder if the time comes when I need to replace my backup generator will I be able to install such a fuel cell instead? I wouldn't miss the noise.
So you run a gas powered heating system with a tank which produces hot water for heating and hot water for shower etc which produces heat from gas at 110% efficiency.
Then you add a fuel cell which produces ~700 W which then generates power from gas at 35% efficiency at the best? Variable load doesn't work good on fuel cells like on ICE cars, so you put in an additional battery or flat it out by powering the grid and your house to smooth out any peaks.
Well, you still burn gas instead of renewable energy and this at an astonishing low rate of efficiency. Bravo!
i don't like fuel cells but do see they could be good for areas where wind and solar don't work or at lest a backup.
Intruiging solution but instead of using electricity from the grid you are buying more gas from the grid. The question Robert was asking was correct, but he didn't get a straight answer because it does both electricity and heat.
The electricity graph is nice ofcourse, but it doesn't show the gas usage, which is where the energy is really coming from.
There is a small caveat that in NL the goal is to stop using gas for heating by 2050, this device would essentially become outlawed at that time. There is also a push for newly built homes without a gas-grid connection with air-water heat-pumps for heating and hot water. And that has a COP of about 3.5-4, I can't imagine the Ceres power coming close.
Common Air/water heat pumps are the Panasonic Aquarea and Mitsubishi Ecodan, from you guessed it right, Japan. These are all the rage for countries without gas-grids, Portugal, France and Spain come to mind.
Bought you sandwiches!!
IMA SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON!!