IdaTech Plc, (since when did it become a great branding idea to place capital letters in the middle of company names?) successfully floated on London’s AIM a couple off days ago. The company is currently priced above it’s IPO price - pretty good considering current market conditions and that this industry is far from flavour of the month. Investors have after all, lost lots of money in fuel cells over the years.

IdaTech, founded in 1996, was acquired by IDACORP in 1999. IDACORP latterly sold IdaTech to Investec in 2006, since when there has been a steady deal flow and series of press releases. Investec, incidentally, even use IdaTech’s fuel cells as backup in their HQ.

IdaTech’s major USP has to be its use of methanol mixed with water as a hydrogen fuel source for the reformer, engendering longer run times in emergency backup situations.

Still, for anyone who wants to read the sceptic’s case against fuel cells, I highly recommend Joe Romm’s Hype About Hydrogen, a book I’ve mentioned a few times here before.

Ballard Power Systems has reducted its second-quarter loss to $11.1 million this year, from $17.3 million a year ago, and boosted revenue by 15 per cent.

The performance metrics are all in the right direction. Ballard is a company which I have admittedly been very sceptical about in the past (see my post from September 27th 2005) and here as well. The good news is that Ballard is starting to possibly look a bit like Amazon in the late 1990s; not profitable, too much hype, but just possibly, a great future (albeit in a much smaller niche).

The decision by Ballard’s CEO. John Sheridan, to shift focus away from the automotive market and to focus on nearer-term markets, including fuel-cell powered forklifts and cogeneration projects looks shrewder by the day.

As I have remarked here before, the technology for electrically powered vehicles is already way ahead on cost and performance to fuel cells (see my post Electric vehicles may be closer than we think - from June 25th 2007). The trouble is that most of the big auto manufacturers are “overweight” financially and pr-invested in fuel cells. For them, to suggest a change of course at this stage would cause them huge embarassment . . .

I’m so impressed by the energy storage technology of Altairnano. What they need is for one of the big automakers to buy into their technology in a big way. In so doing though, an awful lot of egos are going to be bruised and more than a few fuel cell visionaries will be left high and dry.

Well bring it on; this is capitalism and it works.

There was just one story yesterday - Hoku Scientific jumped 47% in one day on news that its subsidiary, Hoku Materials, signed a 10-year contract for delivery of polysilicon with Suntech Power Holdings.

The detail of the contract is that it calls for a $2 million deposit on deliveries slated to start in 2009 and additional prepayments of $45 million. Critically, it also could mean $675 million in revenues over a 10-year period.

From a posting, blogging point of view, I love Hoku. It provides an extraordinary tale how a fuel cell company which bizarrely decides to locate in Hawaii, decides to diversify into solar and actually succeed. What were the odds on that?

And whoever is in charge of drumming up the business for Hoku is the definition of rainmaker.

Plug Power, the stationary fuel cell manufacturer, has finally got a permanent CFO to replace the temp. - David Waldek, appointed in February. Could this be the start of a long-heralded turnaround?

The stock is down over 40% from 12 months ago. If money was no object, I’m sure a lot of people would be buying fuel cells. It’s just that it is an object. Only yesterday, I saw an advert in the newspaper for a new 5 kilowatt diesel generator generator for all of $2000. That really is hard to beat. And corporate customers would pay less.

The advantages of gas-powered fuel cells are real;

- they produce virtually no SOx, NOx, or CO
- they’re also quiet and lightweight
- they have high reliability - 6 nines or 99.9999% to use the lingo

All the stationary fuel cell industry needs is a price breakthrough. But I can’t see it coming any time soon.

Micro stock Voller Energy, having originally tried to crack a few years ago the portable power pack for laptops, ipods and mobile phones and clearly not having succeeded, is now trying to break into the construction market.

I have to say this looks like their most promising venture yet. You buy an ipod because it’s small and neat. The Voller fuel cell charger is not that - they really don’t fit together and the noise it makes would make it hard to work on a laptop.

But it’s chunky yellow looks (see here and click on movies at bottom left of page), somewhat reminiscent of a JCB digger are a plus for the unfussy, no-nonsense builder. The sales channel is promising too - Speedy Hire, the leading supplier of cordless tools to the UK construction industry. The aim is to for the fuel cell generator to replace diesel generators in the 200,000 static shelters for construction workers in the UK.

I’m also wondering if there would be scope for scaling up their technology. The highly portable gas 10 inch canister that is used with the unit is pretty small. Why not connect it to a 13 kg gas cannister (as used in a large barbecue) and run much bigger machinery, like road-digging tools, a bit like they do with their marine products?

For serious power applications, the 100 watt limit of the fuel cell generator could then be lifted to 2 kilowatts.

Ceramic Fuel Cells, had an unusually large turnover of shares today, 13 million shares compared to a more usual 1 million or less. This is prompting bid speculation that a large “White Goods” manufacturer - i.e. a maker of fridges, freezers, washing machines, dishwashers etc. - wants to buy them outright. Having reread my last post on the company from March, I’m reminded that they’ve got quite a big interest in Germany. So if I was to speculate who the mystery bidder is, one big German white goods manufacturer who might well be interested is Bosch.

Acta Spa, an Italian fuel cell developer listed on London’s AIM, which makes platinum-free HYPERMEC branded catalysts, is turning in some much improved results.

The company says that revenues in the first five months were ahead of expectations, and were more than double the level for the whole of 2006.

Acta also can report progress with its next generation of catalyst, the Hypermec 3 which in tests showed it had 70 percent more power than Acta’s previous version. See this interview with Acta’s Chief Operations Officer from March this year in the Wall Street Journal. Said Woolrych, the COO

“We’ve positioned ourselves at the forefront of a trend . . . we’re in the right place at the right time. All the car manufacturers are keen to move towards non-carbon energy in the next 10-20 years”.

That’s quite a bold statement. I think some manufacturers like Porsche or Ferrari will never use non-carbon energy. Still, given that Acta is still a small company, the upside for them if just one medium-sized manufacturer uses their catalyst has to be substantial.

As I remarked in an earlier post, the fortunes of Acta are closely tied to the price of platinum. And right now, the mid spot price is $1289. Apart from making the case for platinum free catalysts, the ramp in platinum prices has had other effects too. Platinum is now vying with gold for wedding or engagement rings !

For the last couple of months, ITM Power, has been bouncing near it’s 12 month low. So it was interesting to learn that a non-executive director at fuel cell technology firm ITM Power has raised his stake. Peter Hargreaves spent £336,000 on 280,000 shares at 120p each and now holds 5.67 million shares.

Add to this that ITM’s cooperation with the Hydrogen Engine Centre is about to yield fruit. HEC engines are being integrated with ITM Power electrolyzers, to become a stand-alone power generation solution for industrial and residential customers and the first of these engines are to be delivered to ITM this spring.

Since my last post announcing the tie-up between the 2 companies in November, the stock has not done that well, but they have that in common with most fuel cell stocks since the Spring shakeout last year.

What I do like about the technology is that the prototype engine also runs on other more available fuels like hydrogen, propane, natural gas, ethanol or gasoline. And yet, whilst I loathe diesel fumes, breaking into the backup / standalone diesel generator market - as many companies have tried these last few years - appears to be a very tough nut to crack.

Mechanical Techology, a NASDAQ listed stock who has a large subisidiary, Micro Fuel Cells, has just received funding from the US Department of Energy for $1.8m.

Good for them. But my observation is that micro fuel cells in general have been a huge disappointment. A few years ago, they were heralded as the next big thing after lithium ion batteries. Yet they have not broken into the consumer market, less still anything like as quickly as anticipated. And since the plot to blow up airliners last year using a combination of liquid concoctions over the Atlantic, now you can’t take any sort of liquid except baby milk on board. So forgive me if I can’t see micro fuel cells containing methanol making it - for at least a while. Quite apart from which, have you ever seen a micro fuel cell powered device or had the opportunity to buy rechargeable fuel cells for you cell phone, camera, etc. and why do you think that is?

When an alternative energy company is really going places, it’s not because it is funded by the DOE. And $1.8m is not such a big amount. Perhaps I am being unfair to Mech Tech’s subsidiary - see the company’s technological progress timeline here. What can be said is that direct methanol fuel cells have certain advantages, namely;

i) methanol is liquid at room temperature, unlike hydrogen making storage easy
ii) methanol has a higher energy density than hydrogen at room temperature

My gut instinct though is that post all the hype, the micro fuel cell market will not emerge for mass consumers, but for niche markets who are not so risk averse, specifically;

a) the US military and b) outdoor campers/trekkers where power has to be portable or not at all.

Hoku Scientific, the Hawaiian fuel cell membrane developer which unusually decided to morph into a solar company, has just signed a 99 year contract on 67 acres of land to build their silicon wafer fab. Given that US property prices are down about 10% of their peak, the company did well to wait until now.

Or maybe not !

Hoku Scientific is only going to an annual rent of $1 per year, for the next 99 years and they may even get another 450 acres.

When complete, the plant will produce 2000 metric tons of polysilicon per year. That the land is effectively being given to them will help a lot to offset what should be a headache for any energy intensive fab - Hawaii’s staggeringly high electricity prices.

One of Hoku’s clients for all this polysilicon will be Germany’s Solar Fabrik, who like most solar module manufacturers, just can’t get enough of the stuff.