First the efficiency of a combined cycle gas turbine which will be coming next year is GE's H Technology. In order to achieve it you need a combined cycle unit of 400,000 kw. It has a forced outage rate too large to use as a standalone unit so you need reserves of about 20%. Then you need a transmission, maybe a subtransmission, and a distribution system. Lets price all these out.

The generation you price at $300/kw is priced by the Gas Research Institutes's Paul Bautista at $500 - $900, and he wants to sell gas. Lets go with the low number. Adding 20% reserves it is $600 per kw. Then we must add up to $850 per kw for the transmission, any subtransmission and distribution. Now we are up to $1450 per kw. Then let us measure the efficiency at the meter rather than at the busbar. For residential loads one must subtract 13% to 16% electrical losses, (I squared R losses) and the efficiency of that claimed 60% H technology goes down to 50.4%. But it is that only on cold days. On hot days, or on sites up on a mountain it is far less than that.

Finally, 20% reserves will give it a pretty good reliability, about 3 nines. But some customers, those new communications and computers and data storage customers need far better. They can't get it from the grid. Finally, even the new combined cycles have trouble meeting pollution standards. If they want better economy they have to raise intake temperatures. But that increases pollution so they take antipollution measure and decrease economy. Fuel cells will give you economy and clean air too.

Finally, that transmission is not only costly but no one wants it in their back yard so in order to build it you have to make a lot of people mad and it costs a lot in litigation and delays contruction a lot which increases the cost even more.

Are fuel cells starting to look good? PPL thinks so, why don't you. They have pretty good credentials in the electric power business.

By the way, the field trial efficiency of a 250 kw module MCFC is 47%. It is expected to be higher in the mature units of 300 kw modules. It will be even higher in 1.5 mw stacks, and is predicted to be 57% to my recollection in mature stacks of 3 mw. Since they are relatively small compared to that H technology gas turbine, noiseless, and pollutionless, they can be sited relatively near the load where their efficiency can be increased to 80% or 90% CHP efficiency by using the thermal energy for domestic hot water, space heating or air conditioning in the case of high temperature fuel cells. Further, by adding a bottoming cycle, you can get up to 80% electrical efficiency.

Finally, volume production has already brought the price down to $4,000 per kw in the sale to Marubeni. The increase in production volumes to 50 MW will further reduce the cost to $2,000/kw and production volumes of 400 mw will reduce it to $1,250 - $1,500 per kw according to the DOE auditors.

More THoughts from Webrand2:

Now, looming on the horizon is another disincentive to building units that will last 50 years or even six or seven years. Would you sink a couple of hundred million in a plant that might be obsolete before you recovered your investment? With fuel cells on the horizon, you would be just as crazy to build combined cycle units as it was to build coal fired steam turbines after the aeroderivative gas turbine and the combined cycle unit became available with the low gas prices at that time.

No, I am not as confident as you are that the California energy shortage will disappear in a couple of years. I hope it will because I have relatives in Culver City and Pasadena and elsewhere. I grew up in Altadena which used to have its own system or buy from Pasadena which had its own.

Pratt: FCEL is going to produce 400 mw of fuel cells. They can use them to produce 250 - 300 kw modules or groups of them so that they will be producing 250 kw stacks, 1.5 mw stacks or 3 mw stacks. These will not need transmission or subtransmission because they are small enough to serve either an on-site load or a small load center. If any wires are needed to serve load they will be extremely short lengths of distribution line operating a secondary distribution voltages of 110, 220 and perhaps some 440 volts. If they produce 250 kw modules they can supply 1600 generating units which will be perfectly fine as distributed generation

Fuel cells are distributed generation. They will not need transmission or subtransmission. They will be on site or else they will be located in the load center they are serving. The equivalent heat rate of a mature three mw mcfc fuel cell is 3413/0.57 = 5987 BTUs per kwh. The equivalent heat rate of a mcfc hybrid will be 3413/0.80 = 4266 BTU's per kwh. IPP's like Calpine currently installing combined cycle systems burning spot gas will be in trouble IMHO.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

2. Environmental advantages...

2-5 ppm NOX for a turbine. No argument again, but let's talk mass rates instead of concentrations. A natural gas-fired combustion turbine (CT) with 2-5 ppm NOx can easily emit hundreds of tons per year of NOx, particulate matter, CO, etc. depending on its size. A fuel cell emits trace quantites of these pollutants. Depending on the CT's size, the air permitting process can take well over a year (my experience) so the advantage of a fuel cell is trace amounts of air pollution and no air permit required. Besides, which would you want installed near your neighborhood? A tennis court-sized fuel cell providing power, or a 1000 MW CT with 100+ foot stack? Not only that, how much ammonia is needed for your SCR or SNCR NOx control? Are you going to have ammonia trucks rolling through my neigborhood each day? What are the dangers associated with an ammonia release? I think the environmental benefits are clearly in favor of fuel cells.

3. Efficiencies/Cogeneration
FCEL offers three options:
- FC with no heat recovery
- FC with steam generation
- FC/turbine hybrid for situations where steam is not needed.

4. Plant Size. Bigger is better in terms of plant size for power generation.
Like many other posters on this board, you seem to be obsessed with initial capital costs versus the total cost (capital + operating costs). Fuel cell has no moving parts except for the blower moving the air through the stack so maintenance should be minimal. I can't tell you what it costs to maintain and operate a CT, maybe someone else can. And you're right, initial market penetration for FCEL will be small power need customers like every manufacturing/production facility in the world who needs to minimize disruptions from power losses/fluctuations resulting from the grid.

Why on earth, Mr. larsen e whipsnade, would you even think of scaling up a fuel cell system to 1000 MW. Think small! Small is beautiful! With big plants you need those expensive, ugly transmission and distribution lines, that incur electrical losses and whose exposure to wind, lightning and drunk drivers cause reliability problems. With small fuel cell stacks, premium reliability is available at a low cost because redundancy of a 250 kw generator is a lot cheaper than having two or three of those 1,000,000 kw generators in reserve. A whole lot.

When your load grows by 250 kw , you can add a 250 kw generator, not a 1,000,000 kw generator and have the surplus remain idle until your load grows into it.

Size your generation to fit either the on-site load, or at best, the load center. Transmission? Fuhgedabboudit.

Finally, forget about pollution. Reduce greenhouse gases. We'll throw those in at no extra cost.