Development Progress on the Ceres Power Steel Cell Technology Platform: Further Progress Towards Commercialization

Ceres Power is continuing to make excellent progress in the development of its low-temperature metal supported SOFC design (the ‘Steel Cell’) based predominantly around the use of ceria. This unique design architecture allows for a robust, low cost, subsidy free fuel cell product, whilst retaining the advantages of fuel flexibility, high efficiency and low degradation. Over the last year, several significant technological and commercial developments have taken place. The latest generation of SteelCell technology (v4.0) has completed validation and verification testing, and is now the standard version of the technology offered to customers. The v4.0 cell/stack technology has a significantly simplified and lower-cost manufacturing process relative to earlier technology generations, whilst offering improved performance and comparable degradation. v4.0 stacks have been incorporated into natural-gas fuelled Ceres Power SteelGen 700We micro-CHP demonstrators, which have been deployed in several locations in the UK as part of a field trial in association with British Gas funded by the European Ene.field program. In addition to this Ceres is also working with Nissan to evaluate the application of SteelCell technology to an electric vehicle range extender application, taking advantage of the thermal cycle and mechanical robustness of the technology, which is at least an order of magnitude better than published data from any other SOFC stack developer. In addition to an ongoing joint development agreement with Honda, Ceres has also been granted a US DoE grant working with Cummins on a 5kWe-class stationary power generator for use in data centers. Ceres has also announced a joint development and licensing agreement with another large global OEM to develop a multi-kWe-scale micro CHP system. A major focus of ongoing technology development is to further improve stack power density, durability and efficiency in line with the technology roadmap for next generation products. Significant progress has been demonstrated at the R&D level on all of these requirements, and the design improvements to achieve them will be incorporated into the next generation of SteelCell technology.