Sonoma County plans fuel cell power plant (Calif.)

[jpak]

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20081226/NEWS/812260321?Title=Sonoma_County_plans_fuel_cell_power_plant

After determining that two dozen Sonoma County government buildings are big producers of greenhouse gas emissions, officials are embarking on a $22.3 million reduction plan that includes installing a fuel cell power plant.

The plant, which takes hydrogen from natural gas to create an electrochemical reaction that produces electricity, will cost about $9.8 million and will be key to achieving reduced energy usage, officials said.

"This is a huge, big deal" said Supervisor Mike Reilly. "It is a cutting-edge project that marks a major milestone in exceeding our goals."

Two years ago, county supervisors and administrators agreed to Climate Protection Action Plan goals of reducing emissions to 20 percent below 2000 levels by 2015. A concrete way to achieve those goals, however, wasn't clear until general services administrators proposed the fuel cell power plant.

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[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. No mention of who the provider is but my guess would be.....

http://www.fuelcellenergy.com/fuelcell-energy-in-the-news.php



Syracuse university gets it and so do all of the others in the above link... just a couple of years ago you had know it alls stating that this stuff was going nowhere.

http://www.fuelcellenergy.com/files/FCE_SUNY-ESF_070208-LR.pdf

The college installed a 250 kilowatt Direct
FuelCell® (DFC®) DFC300A™ power plant from
FuelCell Energy in February 2006 at Walters
Hall, an 85,000 square foot learning and
research building.The DFC system utilizes
hydrogen produced from internally reformed
natural gas to generate power in a noncombustion,
electrochemical process.The power
plant emits negligible amounts of harmful
pollutants (NOx and SOx) and significantly
less greenhouse gas (CO2) in comparison
to traditional, fossil-fuel powered technologies.
Additionally,waste heat from the fuel cell
is captured and used for building heat
and hot water.

[kristopher]

2. With a fuel cell you have an either/or situation

Either you use natural gas and get high system efficiency at the cost of moderate continued greenhouse gas emissions, or use hydrogen from wind/solar electrolysis and get moderately low system efficiency and no greenhouse gas emissions.