Energy futureAbility to switch between fuels on-the-fly successfully demonstrated
One way to prepare for a disaster is to make sure your power generators can quickly switch from one fuel to another; a Connecticut company successfully demonstrates that it can be done
One way for a power plant to prepare for an interruption caused by a natural disaster or an act of terrorism is if it acquires the ability to switch fuels quickly. Thus, if the main fuel supply storage is damaged or access to it cut off, the generators should be able to switch, seamlessly, to another type of fuels stored at another location at the plant. Danbury, Connecticut-based FuelCell Energy (NASDAQ: FCEL) has successfully demonstrated its stationary power plants’ ability to switch quickly between fuels, thus validating the systems’ capacity to cope with fuel supply interruptions from natural disasters or security issues at mission-critical facilities.
The power plant was evaluated in conjunction with Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC), operators of the Department of Defense (DoD) Fuel Cell Test and Evaluation Center (FCTec) in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The power plant continued to generate base load electricity on a secondary fuel supply (propane) when the loss of its primary fuel source (natural gas) was triggered. The R&D project is being sponsored by the federal government to demonstrate the dual fuel capability of Direct FuelCell (DFC) power plants. CTC is the primary contractor to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, involving its Engineer Research and Development Center’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (ERDC-CERL). FuelCell Energy and CTC operated a sub-megawatt DFC power plant on HD-5 propane fuel at full load achieving an electrical efficiency of 46 percent. The Johnstown plant continues to operate, having accumulated a total of 3060 hours on propane and generated 425 Megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity as of 28 June 2006. The plant also operated 550 hours on natural gas — generating an additional 45 MWh.
