AltEnergy Investor

ITM Power rallies on research update

London listed ITM Power , a fuel cell company developing materials and patented production methods to produce low cost fuel cells and electrolysers rallied yesterday on the back of a new research update.

What makes ITM different to other fuel cell companies is that it is trying to develop liquid fuel cells - direct methanol fuel cells, which could avoid the inherent priciness of plantinum.

It has filed patent applications both on the invention of a composite membrane of enhanced properties including specifically an acid/alkaline laminate, and on the use of control grids to act directly on and control the electrical activity within a fuel cell.

It closed today at a new high of 139.5.

FuelCell Energy announces deal with Sewage plant

Nasdaq listed FuelCell Energy , has just announced a partnership with a sewerage in North-Eastern Germany.

Keep reading, this is actually a lot more interesting than you might think !

FCE stands out as a fuel cell company that early on decided not to rely on hydrogen to fuel its fuel cells, but off the shelf fossil fuels such as natural gas. The hydrogen economy, so they believed, was decades off. So their fuel cells would reform gas, stripping off the hydrogen for power. A kind of fuel cell plus.

Now they're taking it a step further and using the power of human waste.

What they are doing here is to use the gas (particularly methane) which comes from the sewage to power the fuel cell, to power the plant and to sell any excess power back into the grid.

Pretty clever !

Q3 for Millennium Cell and the miltary future

Millennium Cell has just posted improved Q3 results, although still making a loss.

The company calls itself the "Hydrogen Battery Technology Company" and sees its future markets as military, medical, industrial and consumer.

Of particular recent interest here though is the military market, for which they have developed a 30 watt battery pack together with Protonex Technology Corporation.

The U.S. Army is funding the development of a portable 30 watt soldier power product (the "P2").

MC CEO H. David Ramm said "We expect the Air Force to begin field testing early next year and Protonex to begin low volume shipments to support this effort in early 2006".  Mr. Ramm continued, "While the military has clearly emerged as our lead market in the near term, we view the P2 as an attractive replacement for batteries in selected applications in the medical and industrial markets".

This won't be the first time that military investment has made possible a product on consumer markets.

Hoku Scientific - celebrated on Nasdaq

Dustin Shindo, CEO of Hoku Scientific, Inc. today presided over the opening bell to celebrate its initial public offering on the NASDAQ - the first Hawaian company ever to do so.

Hoku Scientific Inc., a fuel-cell technology developer that went public in early August, has since then doubled its stock price after a mighty rise in mid-September. It has also just posted its third straight profitable quarter and is currently trading at $11.47.

To find a quoted fuel cell company that makes money is a true rarity.

To find it is located in Hawaii is extraordinary.

Voller Energy - on course for profitability?

Ahead of the AGM yesterday, London AIM listed Voller Energy Plc issued a very upbeat statement. The group, "believes it is on course to be one of the first fuel cell companies in the world to reach profitability."

Voller also announced the resignation of Chief Technical Officer Mark Turpin after joining the group's technical team in February 2005. 

Hard-headed investors must like Voller's law :

"Consumers will not pay a premium to be environmentally friendly nor will they accept a performance degradation to be environmentally friendly".

I'm not sure it's true though.

Take a look at the Toyota Prius - not only are consumers paying a premium, it's pretty ugly too !

Fuel cells - when will they make money?

According to a recent report by PwC, the revenues of 20 listed fuel cell companies declined from 2003 - 2004 and none of them are profitable. According to the report's co-author, John Webster, "It's unique in our experience. The sector has always shown reasonably healthy increases in revenues".

On the bright side, Distributed Energy Systems made a 450% gain in revenues.

I still think fuel  cells other than in the portable throwaway market are still some way off.

Ballard cutting costs to go commercial

Struggling Canadian Firm, Ballard Power Systems, recently announced a further 100 job losses to cut costs. The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to develop fuel cells for commercial vehicles. Now it seems Ballard is desperate to get off the R&D track, go commercial and that's what these job cuts were about. Earlier this year, Ballard made a bold committment to offering commercially viable fuel cell technology for hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2010.

Ballard said a 2010 demonstration will show that its technology has the following characteristics: 5,000 hours of lifetime; an ability to start at -30 degrees C; volumetric power density of 2,500 watts net per litre; and a cost of $30 US per net kilowatt at a volume of 500,000 units. 

This looks like a tall order to me. But if Ballard can really pull this off, they will be very big.

FuelCell Energy reports Q3

Nasdaq listed FuelCell Energy, has just posted its Q3 results for fiscal 2005.

After the closing bell Monday, FuelCell posted a loss after paying preferred dividends, of $18.6 million, or 38 cents per share. That compares with a year-ago loss of $19.2 million, or 40 cents per share. Today, the stock closed up nearly 8% to 10.30.

What makes FCE different to other fuel cell companies are that it is situating itself at the larger power end of the market, up to 2 MW and above all their patented, "Direct Fuel Cells" which produce hydrogen directly from natural gas. This circumvents the cost of producing and transporting pure industrial hydrogen into a fuel cell.

Ceramic Fuel Cells

For reasons I have not been able to discover, australian listed Ceramic Fuel Cells rose 300% on Friday to close at AUD 0.60.

What's fascinating is that In terms of its business model, product range and target market, CFC is almost identical to Ceres Power - as discussed below. It is partnering with large utilities like RWE and New Zealand's Powerco, to target the Combined Heat and Power Market, with its fuel cells that run off natural gas.

The promise of domestic CHP fuel cells is to substantially reduce emissions - perhaps by half - compared to a typical hot water boiler and using electricity from the National Grid for the same amount of expended energy.

It used to be thought that it was more a question of if fuel cells would ever come into the home. Now it's looking more like when. There are though two questions that need to be answered;

at what price are consumers ready to buy fuel cells?

and will governments step in to incentivise them?

My guess is that over the next 2 to 3 years we will find out the answers. And Ceres Power and CFC will either be on the road to greatness or the dirt track to nowhere.

Ceres Power lands a great partner

London Aim-listed Ceres Power, a company that plans to mass produce solid oxide fuel cells for the combined heat and power market, has just signed up a critically important partner, Centrica. Centrica, formerly known as British Gas, is the dominant player in the business of providing gas to British homes for heating and cooking.

This could be a breakthrough development. By using the fuel cell to make electricity in the household, fed by gas from the UK's gas network, the national grid is bypassed leading to much lower power costs. Typically, two-thirds of the retail price of electricity are in its distribution from the power plant to the end consumer.

On a more practical level, a boiler takes up a lot of space, but this fuel cell isn't much bigger than a pack of CD cases. If Ceres Power do become the first company to mass manufacture fuel cells for the domestic market, their target has to be to bring costs down to that of a replacement boiler.

Then the world's fuel cell market just might be their oyster.

Ceres Power closed on Friday at 122p.

Pearce Hammond on fuel cells

For those of you new to the categorisation of fuel cell stocks, this Wall Street transcript interview with Pearce Hammond published yesterday is an excellent start.

Hammond points out that if you look at Ballard, Plug Power and Fuel Cell Energy, they are 3 completely different business models. Ballard is fuel cells for automobiles, Plug Power for the backup battery market and FCE for the stationary base load power plant. He then further discusses each company and fuel cells in some detail.

As discussed earlier in these posts, there are also mobile micro fuel cells which we are likely to see shortly from Medis Tech.

Fuel Cell stocks had a huge following in the late 90s and then crashed spectacularly - admittedly along with many others. Now though, record oil prices, better technology and renewed investor interest all point to considerable growth potential for this sector.

Hoku Scientific - recovering from an initially disappointing IPO

I always thought that fuel cell companies work in unglamorous industrial estates. Well Hoku Scientific - hoku is hawaiian for star - works out of Hawaii.

Their IPO was launched at $6 two days ago, closed down disappointingly at $5.36 but closed up yesterday at $6.40.

What makes this company unusual in the fuel cell business is that it is concentrating on the membrane components, not the whole fuel cell. It also enjoys backing from Sanyo. The target market is to provide membranes for a 1kw fuel cell for the japanese market - priced at about $5000.

There are quite a few companies looking to break into the domestic market for fuel cells. It just might happen in Japan first - where consumers already accept very high energy costs.

Millennium Cell - will it crack hydrogen storage?

Millennium Cell closed up over 21% on the day to $2.22. As this article shows, MC is one of the leading companies trying to crack the problem of hydrogen storage.

"The most critical barrier to the hydrogen economy" says Steve Chalk of the Department of Energy, is creating a viable hydrogen storage platform. More specifically, weight, volume, cost and refuelling times are the limits right now. The DoE is now sponsoring research to meet these goals.

President Bush gave a speech 2 years ago claiming that any child born now should be learning to drive on a hydrogen vehicle. Right now, that's looking unlikely.

Q2 for Millennium Cell

Nasdaq listed Millennium Cell has just reported a net loss for Q2 of $5.8 m. Today the stock closed up over 13% at $1.88.

Millennium Cell's corporate focus is to develop hydrogen battery technology through a patented chemical process that stores and delivers hydrogen energy to power portable devices.

The stock has clearly done well this past year, ranging from 80 cents, rising swiftly to as high as $3.15.

Now that's what I call volatility !