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April issue 2000:
 

Opportunities Abound

A Lack Of Interest In Distributed Generation

by William E. Sturgeon, Account Manager, Cinergy Corp., Cincinnati, Ohio


The 21st century marks the beginning of decentralized power generation.  Distributed Generation (DG), in many different concepts, will bring power generation closer to the end user while improving energy efficiency and reliability.


What does decentralized power generation mean to our natural gas industry? Like a small drop of water falling into a stream; many drops cause a cascading river.  The opportunity for natural gas usage is unlimited within Distributed Generation technology. Now is the time to get involved, before the waters’ flow sweeps by us.


I say all this, because I recently attended the first field test Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) application research site at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, IN. The dedication ceremony had a big attendance of engineers, a congressman, a lieutenant governor, a Canadian consulate, a utility vice president and many others - but, as I looked around and talked to attendees, there were no gas associates. Since this fuel cell utilized natural gas, I was amazed that the industry wasn’t represented.

While pondering this thought, let me explain how fuel cells work. Hydrogen fuel, which can be obtained from fuels such as natural gas, methanol, or petroleum, and oxygen from the air electrochemically combine in the fuel cell to produce electricity.

A single fuel cell consists of a membrane electrode assembly and two flow field plates. Single cells are combined into a fuel cell stack to produce the desired level of electrical power. Gases (hydrogen and air) are supplied to the electrodes on either side of the PEM through channels formed in the flow field plates. Hydrogen flows through the channels to the anode where the platinum catalyst promotes its separation into protons and electrons. On the opposite side of the PEM, air flows through the channels to the cathode where oxygen in the air attracts the hydrogen protons through the PEM. The electrons are captured as useful electricity through an external circuit and combine with the protons and oxygen to produce water vapor on the cathode side.
The PEM fuel cell power plant generates power without combustion and is considered to be environmentally benign. Heat and pure water vapor are the only by-products from the fuel cell’s electrochemical reaction.

That’s about as technical as I can get within this short article. My real point is that this unit operated with natural gas as its fuel source. The burner assembly was supplied at a maximum of 11# psig and a minimum of 9# psig with a flow rate of about 600 hundred cubic feet per hour to produce an electrical output of 250kW. For those of us that are non-electrical, 250kW would equate to about the electrical requirements of 25 typical electrical heated, or 35 gas heated residential homes.
A recent Frost & Sullivan study says that the fledgling fuel cell industry is projected to grow by 49.6 percent by 2005. The ongoing deregulation of North America’s electric power industry, coupled with mounting environmental awareness, is ensuring continued growth of this technology and many other natural gas-fired generation methods such as microturbine powered products and power generators.

  • Microturbine Powered Products— Single systems produce a variety of ranges of electricity and the units can be linked to produce at nearly any required operation level. A heat by-product can also be effectively utilized in a multitude of applications to lower a customer’s overall cost of energy.
  • Power Generators—These can be residential, commercial and/or industrial applications. They can turn on instantly, automatically at the first sign of a power outage, even if the building is not occupied. These are installed outside and oftentimes are no more conspicuous than a central air conditioning unit. With a natural gas hookup and the unit permanently wired to the electrical system, the reservations about running out of fuel are forever eliminated. Customers can use the generator as their primary source of power with their electric utility as a backup.
    The whole point of this article, without being too simplistic, is that gas companies, like manufacturers and retailers worldwide, need to shift some of their focus to the new cutting edge of competition—Distributed Generation.


Increasingly, loss of power means loss of productivity, decreased customer satisfaction, loss of business and other opportunity costs.

With natural gas as the fuel source, a customer has a new source of primary power that can automatically take over when the utility grid fails. This technology can ensure maximum uptime to his facility and deliver the lowest possible energy cost. Distributed Generation can also be used for peak shaving during a customer’s on-peak hours when he typically is paying the highest rates for electricity.

Now is the time to revisit our main extension and service policies to begin to take advantage, and become a part of this new Distributed Generation technology.  We ought to get there first, sponsor some of this new technology development and then make it as easy as possible to use our product. After all, once our product is utilized, the project is ours throughout its life span and it usually provides a positive cash flow for many years.

Though we assume we are competitive and generally doing a good job, it certainly appears that our industry has a long way to go. If we can’t show more interest in these latest technologies that are effectively using our fuel, ask yourself, “Is the water flowing by?” P&GJ

Cinergy Corp. is a gas and electric utility that serves 1.4 million electric and 478,000 gas customers in northern Kentucky, Indiana and southern Ohio. The author is a board member of the Kentucky Gas Association and an A.G.A. certified Registered Commercial Gas Consultant.