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ALTERNATIVE ENERGY Companies take initiative in use of hydrogen fuel cells


A small number of companies are making investments as early pioneers in hydrogen power.

KEARNEY, Neb. (AP) -- A company that made its name in camping lanterns hopes a portable generator it has begun manufacturing here will help shine the way to a future powered by clean energy.

The Coleman Powermate generators combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce up to 1,000 watts of electricity. Pure water is the only waste product of this fuel-cell technology, giving it tremendous appeal to promoters of clean energy.

A small number of companies are banking on hydrogen as the fuel of the future. Boosters see in it an incipient boom; skeptics suggest it could end in bust.


Even President Bush touted fuel-cell technology in his recent State of the Union address, pledging that it could routinely power automobiles 20 years from now.

Despite the hope -- and the hype -- for a fuel-cell future, the technology is decades away from widespread use. The major stumbling block is cost.

Acknowledges drawback

That's something even the Coleman engineer who developed the company's $6,000 AirGen acknowledges.


The company has sold "some" of the units, but it won't say how many. It hopes to roll out a version for home use in March.

Other manufacturers include United Technologies Corp. of Hartford, Conn. It has sold more than 250 fuel cells that produce 200 kilowatts and according to company spokesman Peter Dalpe, end up costing 16 cents per kilowatt hour over a 20-year period. The average cost of electricity from the grid in the United States is 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

Those 40,000-pound United Technology generators are being used to complement the electrical grid in places such as the First National Bank in Omaha, where two of the units ensure its mainframe computer uninterrupted performance.


But such fuel cells remain anomalies.


Using current technologies, it is too expensive to produce, store, transport and distribute hydrogen fuel to make it commonplace today, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.


Plus, generating hydrogen typically produces the very greenhouse gases fuel-cell power is supposed to reduce or eliminate. Eventually, backers hope to produce "clean" hydrogen using water and electricity generated from the sun or wind. For now, natural gas remains the main source.

That's not stopping companies that are sinking hundreds of millions into fuel-cell research, bolstered by increased federal spending on research and development.

The uses for which the technology is best suited is also unclear. It's an elegant solution for NASA, which has quietly used fuel cells in space for decades, if only for lack of safe options. But that's a niche use.

Companies such as MTI Micro Fuel Cells Inc., Motorola and Casio are designing miniaturized fuel cells for cell phones and laptop computers. The application could replace the often short-lived batteries that are the scourge of portable electronic devices.




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