According to Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited (CFCL) and E.ON UK, the highly efficient new units would be able to power a wide range of UK homes and would also help to reduce carbon emissions in the UK.
E.ON UK is contributing to the product development costs and will retain a first option to purchase future CFCL micro combined heat and power (CHP) units for the British market. The company said that the agreement adds to its existing activities in the field of micro CHP.
Bob Taylor, managing director of energy wholesale and technology at E.ON UK, said: We’re keen to get the units out into homes to see exactly what they can do. While we’re still at a trial stage, we believe that CFCL’s technology is the most advanced offer in the market, and that these fuel cells could make a real difference to our customers’ carbon footprint.
Brendan Dow, managing director of CFCL, added: With this agreement we are now very close to achieving our partnering objectives in Europe. We look forward to working with E.ON UK to bring our energy-saving technology to homes and small businesses throughout the UK.
During the collaboration, CFCL will supply a NetGen+ unit for operation with a supplementary boiler and a specially designed thermal store to produce an ‘Alpha’ prototype, which will subsequently be deployed in a field trial.
The current project schedule is for the NetGen+ unit to be delivered by December 2007, and the Alpha unit to be developed in Q2 2008. CFCL is planning to announce its appliance partner responsible for manufacturing the units in due course.
The partners have agreed to discuss further co-operation in the subsequent development and deployment of ‘beta’ CHP units (comprising CFCL’s fuel cell module fully integrated with a condensing boiler) as well as commercial targets for fuel cell micro CHP units for the UK residential market.
