Fuel Cells in the news

This is a little misleading, as it is not the first school in the state to use a fuel cell. It is the first ELEMENTARY school to use a fuel cell. There are other schools with fuel cells that have been in operation for a while already.

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Reply to
salty
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Anything is wonderful when someone else pays for it...

Reply to
George

as it is not the first school in the

Are you suggesting that each kid provide their own energy? Maybe they could bring it in their little backpacks.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

it is not the first school in the

But this wasn't for a school that had no commercial power. This was a fluff piece about how wonderful fuel cells are neglecting to mention the huge subsidies that make them so "efficient".

Reply to
George

it is not the first school in the

You need to do some homework, George.

Reply to
salty

, as it is not the first school in the

I think he's point is that the TAXPAYERS are paying $1million for it. And that cost may be AFTER other rebates, subsidies, etc. We don't know the economics of it, but I strongly suspect if the numbers were known, it's a bad use of capital. In my house, I have a 48KW service and I pay maybe $1800 a year here in NJ. We have high electric rates ~18c/kwh, similar to CT. I pay around $1800 a year for electricity. The school, not having AC, being mostly shutdown for the summer and not occupied at night, should use proportionately less electricity.

But let's just compare the size of my service to theirs. Their service capability is 8X the size of mine. So, proportionally, we could guess that they would use 8X what I use, or a whopping $15K in electricity a year. Spending $1mil to avoid a $15K a year expense is a very bad investment. Even if they are eliminating electricity bills that are 2X that, it's a bad investment. Ohhh, and that ignores the cost of the FUEL, presumably NG, that they have to put into the fuel cell which is going to make the cost so bad that it will be laughable.

Reply to
trader4

Reminds me of the city slicker on a hike who sees a farmer holding a pig up in the air so the pig could eat apples off the lower branches.

"Uh, what are you doing?" asks the city slicker.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm feeding the pig."

"I don't know much about pigs," said the city-slicker, "but that looks like a terrible waste of time."

"It's obvious you don't know nothin' 'bout pigs... What's time to a pig?"

Reply to
HeyBub

it is not the first school in the

Using a bunch of specious and random numbers and "facts" doesn't really make your case.

Reply to
salty

Interesting approach to making the numbers work even better!

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Man will never fly!

Reply to
salty

ing, as it is not the first school in the

I'm not the one trying to make the case that fuel cells are wonderful and some great, cost effective alternative. You apparently are. If you have any facts that show the true cost of procuring and operating the fuel cell in question as compared to using electricity off the grid, I'd be happy to see it.

Until then, comparing the fuel cell size to a conventional service with the same rating seems a reasonable place to start.

Reply to
trader4

Yes, but even at first glance your numbers are skewed far enough that it makes it look like you have an agenda. A school has all of the lights on all day, no? You do the same thing in your house? And that's just one factor. I could think of a number of reasons for installing fuel cells in a school that aren't limited simply to the energy cost.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

Here's some real numbers for you and it also show who paid for the REAL cost of this fuel cell for the elementary schools:

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$6,500,000 Utility Plant that will provide mechanical / electrical services for new schools - Hill Central and Clemente School - inclusion of Fuel cell for minimizing peak electrical demands.

That's right, according to the City of New Haven, the total cost of the "fuel cell project" was $6.5mil in federal stimulus money. How long do you think the payback on that will be? Answer: You could have put far less money in bonds and the interest would have paid the electric bills forever. That helps show how economically viable it was and should make you feel real good knowing how they spent your tax money. I'l bet it created a few jobs somewhere along the way too.

Reply to
trader4

Yeah, I can think of lots of reasons too. But the real reason is what counts and here it is:

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$6,500,000 Utility Plant that will provide mechanical / electrical services for new schools - Hill Central and Clemente School - inclusion of Fuel cell for minimizing peak electrical demands.

It was paid for by federal pork stimulus money. It needed no economic justification and as I suspected, despite the fluff coverage in the news, it couldn't have stood on it's own. It's also interesting to note that the TOTAL COST was $6.5mil. Now, who has the agenda?

Reply to
trader4

Check out the raw number of lights in a school as compared to a home. When you flip the switch in a single classroom, you are turning on more lights than contained in a complete typical McMansion. One classroom.

Reply to
salty

Oddly enough, these types on installations are being done all over the country, and many are for private, not public, entities.

Big companies who are VERY obligated by law to maximise profits for their shareholders are installing these things. Go figure!

Reply to
salty

Well, everybody. No?

"Economic justification"...is that the only metric that counts? I'm not arguing, I'm asking. I have no particular information on the school and fuel cell installation, so I don't have enough information to have an informed opinion. Generally speaking, though, improving infrastructure and decreasing energy reliance on outside sources is a good thing. And I wonder how much fuel the fuel cells consume. Is it more than a couple of school buses use driving around for a couple of hours every day? I don't know, but it's not going to be measure in the hundreds of gallons a day, right? If the poop hits the paddle, a bigger problem will be getting the kids to the schools when there's no fuel.

The fuel cells provide emergency backup power to the existing emergency shelters - the schools. I'm just glad that they're not using stimulus money to build new shelters from scratch, and then putting the fuel cells in those. That would be truly wasteful. Even more wasteful would be putting in fuel cells in shelters and not shielding them from EMPs, whether solar or big boom.

Do you believe that state and federal energy credits are a bad idea? It's the same topic, really.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

snipped-for-privacy@dog.com wrote: ...

Yes, current tax breaks and the need to "look green" for public relations purposes are also real incentives that can shift the balance of the decision.

As well as the above, there are the additional restrictions in various locations on emissions, particularly in large metro areas that would otherwise preclude expansion.

There are also the "green" mandates for alternate generation that are having to be adhered to that can be reasons for decisions as well.

One has to know the specifics of each to know the "why" but one can be virtually assured that the decision outside the current political and regulatory environment w/ the present tax incentives and credits wouldn't necessarily be the same.

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Reply to
dpb

Except, that's the real world as it is!

Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Reply to
salty

RicodJour wrote: ...

...

Indeed, it is.

Ambivalent, at best, in general is my position.

To show it's not a new topic (is there any? :) ), was a discussion subject in an engineering honors seminar during my undergrad days some

40 years ago, now...

My concern then, as now, is how does one estimate and measure the lost opportunity cost? Who knows what some enterprising entrepreneur would have done or where some venture capitalist or corporate R&D organization would have put the capital that meanwhile went to chasing the current governmental largesse?

On a more mundane level, as member of Board of a local rural electric co-op trying to supply low-cost, reliable power to our members (almost all production farm operations) it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so what with the mandates for wind and other technologies that are purely legislative-driven, not economically.

Even here in the heart of the windy country, wind farms generate only

40% of installed capacity on an annual basis with months that are only 20%. Since even if they were to operate at an equivalent capacity factor to conventional generation the mill cost is higher owing to high construction costs on a /kwh basis since while there is no fuel cost it is an extremely dilute source (as is solar) when accounting for such excess installed capacity to provide a given level of power the effective cost is nearly double that of conventional generation on our grid. Add to that the requirement for standby generation owing to the variable nature of the fuel source and it is not an economic solution for our members but we're being forced that direction by regulation and legislation.

The construction of the facilities would not be progressing in anything at all approaching the present levels if it were not for the tax incentives and the alternative generation percentage mandates.

Even in a small grains-producing area, the same ambivalence is present with ethanol and biodiesel. It isn't clear there should be a mandate unless there is an actual economic benefit overall even though it has made some support in grain prices that effect has been very small relative to the other global effects such as the fires in Russia and drought and other production problems in the other major producing areas. Of course, thrown into that mix is the hangup on trade agreements in the past and current congress that have been strong negatives in the export markets relative to where they could have been as well...

It's a humongously large and complex subject not particularly amenable to actual meaningful discussion here so I'll retire forthwith... :)

I do, however, wish to make clear that claims of nirvana need in-depth consideration of the implications and assumptions and what are the undisclosed support costs involved such as those of the fuel cell project here...as many other tangible and perhaps intangible benefits as the project may have, it's highly unlikely that w/o the ability to have passed the cost on to another funding source the same decision would have been reached as the cost-effective one.

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Reply to
dpb

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I guess this is supposedly the next hot thing:

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Reply to
Dean Hoffman

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