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[March 2008]
Ceramic Fuel Cells Invests Over €12 Million in Manufacturing Facility
Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd (CFCL), a global leader in fuel cell development, is investing €12.4 million in the construction of a manufacturing plant in Heinsberg, Germany for the commercial production of its fuel cell systems.
CFCL has also announced that it has received a volume order from Nuon, The Netherlands’ largest energy company and CFCL’s partner for that market. CFCL and Nuon have agreed on a set of performance targets for a commercial unit. On CFCL’s achievement of these targets, Nuon will order 50,000 fuel cell systems, to be delivered over a five year period from June 2009. The order is expected to generate substantial revenue for CFCL over the five years.
CFCL’s fuel cell systems will be integrated into conventional boilers for use in the low carbon emission heating and power market. These new generation, highly efficient fuel cell boilers, known as micro-combined heat and power (mCHP) units, will be deployed by Nuon for its residential customers to generate both electricity and heating in their homes.
CFCL will assemble its fuel cell systems at its Heinsberg facility in automated and semi-automated production lines in a staged scale-up operation. Initial capacity will be 10,000 units per year, enough to fulfil the Nuon order. Phase II of the project will see an increase in capacity to 160,000 stacks per year within the existing building. The total cost to CFCL of phase I of the manufacturing project, including all plant and equipment and commissioning, will be €12.4 million, significantly below previous expectations. Volume production is expected to commence from June 2009.
In a further technical breakthrough, CFCL’s advances in power density have enabled the company to increase the output from each of its fuel cell stacks to 2kW of electricity at minimal additional balance of plant cost. This significantly reduces the unit’s cost per kW and increases the unit’s CO2 savings. A 2kW unit provides ample power for the average household’s annual ‘base-load’ requirements, as well as additional power for export to the grid. A 2kW unit can save up to three tonnes of carbon dioxide per year compared to existing electricity generation. CFCL has frozen the design of its fuel cell stack and manufacturing processes for the Heinsberg plant.
www.cfcl.com.au
ENDS