Ballard Power Systems has been conditionally awarded up to C$7 million (US$7.2 million) by Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to extend the operating life and lower the product cost of FCgen(TM)-1300, the fuel cell power plant that powers Ballard’s CLEARgen distributed generation system.
The first application of this new lower cost distributed generation solution is expected to be a six-megawatt (6MW) CLEARgen system at the ERCO Worldwide (ERCO) sodium chlorate plant in North Vancouver, British Columbia. ERCO is the specialty chemicals division of Superior Plus Corp. The ERCO plant in North Vancouver generates large quantities of hydrogen as a by-product of sodium chlorate production, and this by-product hydrogen can be used to power the Ballard CLEARgen system to generate megawatts of electricity.
Terasen Gas is a leading integrated energy provider and will undertake a feasibility study to look at the use of heat created by the CLEARgen system at ERCO’s site for district heating applications in North Vancouver.
Ballard recently entered the distributed generation market, in addition to backup power, material handling and transit bus applications. In 2010 Ballard announced commissioning of a 1MW CLEARgen system in Ohio for FirstEnergy Generation Corp., one of the largest regional US utilities, as well as a system sale to K2 Pure Solutions, which will use by-product hydrogen from its bleach production plant in California to generate clean electricity.
Receipt of SDTC project funding is contingent on final agreements being reached between Ballard, ERCO Worldwide and BC Hydro as well as internal Board approvals. Subject to these agreements being approved, the manufacturing and site commissioning work is planned for 2012-13.