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The fuel cell's day
may be dawning
Hydrogen-powered vehicles do more than run on clean energy,
they generate electricity
By Susan Davis
For years, advocates of alternative energy have decried using
oil to fuel our power plants and vehicles. Drilling for oil creates
environmental havoc, critics charge. Burning oil produces noxious
air emissions and contributes to global warming, they continue.
Besides, our oil-guzzling ways make us dangerously dependent on
foreign oil and the foreign powers that control it.
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| High-efficiency solar
panels, such as these, could be used to produce hydrogen to
power a fuel cell vehicle. Peg Skorpinski photo |
But solutions to America's thirst for speed, power, and electrical
gadgetry have been elusive. Electric cars are often a big draw
at auto shows, but such vehicles are still extremely scarce on
the roadways. Electricity produced by wind and solar energy has,
until recently, been more expensive than that produced by fossil
fuel-powered plants. And while conservation has reduced our oil
use significantly -- especially in California -- there are limits
to how much Americans can keep the lights low, the appliances
off, and their cars at home.
For many, this has looked like an unsolvable mess. But for Daniel
Kammen, Berkeley professor of nuclear engineering, energy
and resources, and public policy, the solution is simple: develop
cars that not only run on "clean energy," but also generate
"clean electricity." "And," says Kammen, "develop
and promote them now."
Kammen, who directs the Renewable
and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL), has been analyzing
the benefits of such cars for years -- one aspect of his ongoing
work on the environmental, health, and economic impacts of energy
use in industrialized nations and third world countries.
He and several colleagues released a paper last year showing that
fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) -- cars that generate electricity from
fuel cells -- can serve a dual role: powering your car as well
as supplying electricity at competitive rates, especially in office
buildings. "We surprised ourselves by the results,"
says Kammen with a grin. "We didn't realize the potential
would be so great."
| Consumers’
fuel cell vehicles could generate electricity for local businesses
right from their own garages. |
The idea of using fuel cells, which convert the energy in a fuel
like hydrogen and oxygen into electricity, is not new. Back in
1839, Sir William Grove, an English scientist, discovered that
by combining hydrogen and oxygen, he could produce water and electricity.
Years later, in the 1950s, Francis Bacon used Grove's earlier
discovery to develop a hydrogen-powered fuel cell that could power
a vehicle. Then during the 1960s, Pratt & Whitney went a step
further, and developed fuel cells to create electricity for the
Apollo space missions.
"After that, some power companies expressed interest in using
stacks of fuel cells to generate electricity," Kammen says,
"but it was too costly. Now we're finding the real cost-effectiveness
lies in having people generate their own electricity with their
own fuel cells."
Fuel cells could provide a transition from fossil fuels to renewable
sources of energy, according to Kammen, who has explored the intersection
of energy use and society since his graduate school days. Fuel
cells use an electrochemical reaction to produce electricity,
rather than moving parts, so the cells are quiet. And since there
is no combustion, they generate no air pollution or greenhouse
gases. And because fuel cells are so thin -- as thin as a piece
of paper -- they can be stacked together to produce a lot of electricity
within a small space. That stackability -- or "scaleability"
-- means fuel-cell vehicles will have the get up and go that electric
cars currently lack.
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| Kammen wires up a solar
panel, adjusting the device that measures how much sunlight
the panel absorbs; all this in the treetops of his Barrows
Hall roof lab. Peg Skorpinski photo |
You can also produce extra electricity from them. Rather than
thinking of fuel cells in the traditional model of energy production
-- in which a utility generates electricity from a centralized
location, then transmits it to millions of consumers -- Kammen
envisions consumers using their FCVs to generate electricity for
local neighborhoods and businesses right from their own garages.
Here's how it works. At the end of the day, you drive your FCV
home from the office. The fuel cell you'd be using would, most
likely, run on hydrogen, derived, at least initially, from natural
gas supplied by filling stations. Once inside the garage, you
plug your car into an electrical outlet -- no ordinary electrical
outlet, but one that sends electricity into the grid, rather than
pulling it out of the grid. Then the fuel cells begin generating
electricity.
Using FCVs to generate electricity for just one home is not all
that efficient, Kammen concedes. But an FCV could easily generate
enough electricity to light up several homes, even an office building.
To do that, drivers would motor to work in their FCV, park in
a fuel cell plug-in station, and pump electricity into the company's
building.
It appears to be a clean, efficient solution. And, says Kammen,
it's a solution that could put money back into consumers' pockets,
if FCV consumers are reimbursed for their electricity, either
by their utility company or their employer. In one back-of-the-envelope
calculation, he predicted consumers could earn between $200 and
$1,000 a year, rather than paying $500 to $1,200 in annual utility
fees.
Equally important, such "distributed generation" (rather
than centralized power production from a power plant) could "radically
transform the way we see and use electricity," Kammen says.
"If production is closer to where the electricity is used,
we'll waste less electricity during transmission. What's more,
we can avoid building new power plants and vastly increase the
security and reliability of our electricity system."
Kammen knows that moving toward a world where energy production
relies neither on internal combustion engines nor centralized
power production is a Herculean undertaking -- one that involves
moving mountains in the form of car companies and government agencies,
not to mention consumers. California, Kammen notes, may be the
ideal place to start. The Zero Emissions Requirement of 1994 has
made the need for clean-running cars mandatory; and the state-wide
energy crisis of 2001 raised consumer awareness to new levels.
"Instead of revamping an inefficient, antiquated grid that
relies on 1940s technologies, we should replace it with distributed
generation," Kammen says. "And it doesn't have to be
done overnight. We can update the system neighborhood by neighborhood,
but only if the utilities or other startup companies are afforded
the market opportunity."
Just how soon FCVs could be on the market is unclear. Several
car companies say they will release FCVs in the next few years.
And earlier this year the Bush administration announced it would
back the development of "clean" vehicles powered by
fuel cells. It could be, says Kammen, that we will see FCVs on
the road by the end of next year.
Written by Susan Davis, whose father helped
design the Apollo fuel cells. A Bay Area writer and editor, Davis
has written on environmental issues for Intel Corporation, Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, and The Nature Conservancy. She
co-authored The Sporting Life, a book on the physics of
sports, as well as several books on playing with children, and
has contributed to Sports Illustrated, Parenting, and Ladies
Home Journal.
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