Status and Promise of Fuel Cell Technology

Market penetration of fuel cells is determined to a large ex-tent by product costs. Increasing manufacturing volumes lowers product cost, leading to increased market penetration. Through an Interagency Agreement between NETL and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), DOD has provided funds for the Climate Change Fuel Cell Program. For several years, this program has supported the market penetration of fuel cells by a rebate of $1,000/kW or one-third of the total project costs, whichever is lower, to those organizations installing a fuel cell manufactured in the U.S. Priority has been given to powerplants placed at DOD installations. In 1996, the Climate Change Fuel Cell Program was mana-ged by NETL and resulted in 33 awards for the installation of 42 ONSI PC25, 200 kW phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) powerplants. ONSI Corporation, a subsidiary of International Fuel Cells, located in South Windsor, Connecticut, has been actively involved in the development and marketing of on-site PAFC systems and has a 40 megawatt (MW)/year manu-facturing facility. In 1997, DOD again provided funds to reduce the costs of fuel cells by providing the same rebate opportunity. This pro-gram was managed by DOD’s Advanced Research and De-velopment Engineering Center in Picatinny, New Jersey. Fifty-three awards for ONSI PC25 installations were made in