Business
Key Technical Milestone
Key Technical Milestone.
About this update from Ceres Power Holdings Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n Ceres Power Holdings plc\n13 March 2006\n\n\n Ceres Power Holdings plc\n ('Ceres', 'Ceres Power' or the 'Company')\n \n Key Technical Milestone: Compact, Lightweight 1kW Fuel Cell\n\n\nCeres Power, the AIM-quoted fuel cell group, today announces that it has taken \na major step in commercialising its technology with the achievement of a \ncritical milestone. The Company has successfully designed, built and tested \na 1kW fuel cell stack (the 'Ceres Stack') generating sufficient power for the \naverage home.\n\nThe production-engineered Ceres Stack is extremely compact, both smaller and \nlighter than a typical car battery. It is designed to be reliable, robust \nand economical, lending itself to rapid mass market uptake.\n\nThe Ceres Stack is the fundamental building block of micropower generation \nproducts aimed at a variety of consumer and commercial uses. These include \ncombined heat and power (CHP) units in homes running off natural gas, in \naddition to electrical generators using bottled gas fuels and auxiliary power \nunits for vehicles.\n\nThe Ceres Stack incorporates multiple engineering innovations to deliver \nbreakthrough savings in size, weight, component count and production cost, \nwhilst improving product performance. The unique Ceres technology allows the \nfuel cells to start up and shut down rapidly and repeatedly, withstand \nmechanical shock and have very long lifetimes under realistic operating \nconditions.\n\nCeres is working in a commercial development programme with Centrica plc \n(trading as British Gas) to provide domestic CHP systems in the UK, \nsubstantially reducing both energy bills and CO2 emissions. Ceres CHP products \nare designed to produce electricity and heat in the home from natural gas. \nBritish Gas estimates that 'this makes the technology immediately accessible by \n14.5 million UK households'.\n\nThe UK Government has already identified micropower generation as a core \ntechnology within national energy policy. The Ceres Stack will enable fuel \ncells to play a key role in the widespread uptake of micropower products.\n\nPeter Bance, CEO of Ceres Power, comments:\n\n'The successful delivery of a 1kW fuel cell lies at the heart of our plans to \nbring product to market both via existing partnerships and new customers in the \nUK and overseas. As concerns grow over rising utility ...