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.