US company FirstEnergy and Canada-based Ballard Power Systems are to start testing a 1 MW utility-scale mobile fuel cell.
The 16.5 m long hydrogen-powered proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell can provide enough electricity to power more than 600 homes and is mounted on a tractor-trailer so it can go wherever it is needed.
The system comprises nine of Ballard’s PEM fuel cell modules, which combine hydrogen and oxygen from the air to produce electricity with only heat and water as by-products.
A compressor provides air for the fuel cell reaction and an inverter converts the output from 640 V DC to 380 V AC, which is stepped up by a transformer to a 480 V three-phase AC supply.
Over the next five years, FirstEnergy and Ballard will test the system in real-world conditions and evaluate its performance in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
The companies are particularly interested in looking at the capability of the system to provide power during peak usage periods from May to September.
“With the increasing interest in clean energy solutions, we are seeing demand for this scalable product across a number of different distributed power generation applications,” says Michael Goldstein, Ballard’s chief commercial officer.