Fuel cell system technologies and application issues

Energy usage has been the target of various conservation and cost control strategies for many years. Technologies have ranged from turning equipment off, to mystical black boxes that lower costs. Utilities have been instrumental in the support of customer energy conservation and development and implementation of efficiency improvements. Natural gas fuel cells are a direct energy conversion technology that has reached stages of development that will begin to supply electrical energy (and associated thermal energy) at comparable life cycle cost to those available from more conventional combustion based electrical generation systems. This article will briefly describe the basics of fuel cells and types of fuel cells. Recent advances in fuel cell technology and installations will be discussed. Finally an analysis will be presented to determine their future within grid, industrial, commercial, and/or residential applications.